Highlander: Penance
by Knolltrey
Summary: A child immortal struggles to survive on the East Coast of the US during the early 1980's. He spends his time dealing with vicious attacks by older immortals while dodging the pursuit of a mysterious nemesis, and reflecting on the hundreds of years of life that have left him a tired, cynical, weather-beaten 12-year-old.
1. Pickoff Move

_I am Penance Cameron, conceived 1599 in Zaragoza, Spain. I was born 12 years later, in the darkness of history, and I am not alone. We are legion among you. We slither through the centuries, living secret lives, slaughtering each other for just a little taste of that mysterious power, claiming each other's heads. They call me 'immortal', but I will not live forever. I know one thing for certain: I am 12 years old now, and I will be 12 years old on the day I die. I know nothing else. I don't need to know anything else. 'Why' would be nice, maybe, but honestly I stopped asking that question after the first few centuries..._

_... In this Game there are no points awarded for being philosophical._

"Pickoff Move"

**Baltimore – 1984**

That little rod hit his skull again. His eyes spotted up, and his nose roiled with the suffocating scent of burning coal chunks. That and milk thistle. Funny what a concussion will do to you, actually. He thought so, anyway. Heck, sometimes the experience was so interesting that he'd give _himself_ a concussion or two, just to see the show. He usually got the best results with a ball peen hammer on a spot just behind his right ear; he could smell strawberries if he did it just right. It was neat.

But he couldn't bother with that, now: he had a bigger problem on his hands.

He struggled, flailing his arms with all his might, digging his Keds against the concrete floor. That was no use; the man pulled him backward like he was dragging a sack of potatoes. It didn't help that his head barely came up to the man's collarbone. He tried sinking his teeth into the man's gloved hand, but all he got for his trouble was a mouthful of tough leather. He screamed into the glove, but not much came out.

The man tossed his metal rod away, letting it bang across the floor. He leaned down near the boy and whispered in his ear. His breath reeked of stale beer and corndog:

"Let's you and me go waaaaay back in the back, here," he said. "What _we're _about to do, kid, is an awfully 'intimate' thing, isn't it? Gonna need some privacy!"

The narrow tunnel ended in a small supply closet. A stark white bulb swung to and fro in there, waving like a beacon. That was where the man was dragging him; that was his intended destination.

And if Mister Corndog managed to get the boy in there then he was dead. It was that simple.

Footsteps sounded from a branch in the corridor. A man suddenly skidded around the corner— he was black, with thick glasses, a neon-colored event staff uniform and a sack of trash slung over one shoulder.

"Hey!" He barked. "Who that? Shouldn't be down here!" When he took a few more steps he got a better read on the situation. "_Hey_! Wha'choo doin' with that boy?" He dropped his trash sack and raced to the kid's aid.

Mister Corndog took exception to that.

He threw the boy headfirst into the tunnel wall. The kid struck it with his forehead (_not _a great place to have a 'good' concussion, in his experience). The man then pulled a long, cruel-looking hatchet from behind his suit jacket and took a swing at the good Samaritan.

"Ah— _ga'aaaaah_!" The black man screamed, falling down to the floor to avoid the swipe.

Mister Corndog followed that miss with a vicious overhead strike. The black man didn't manage to dodge that. A terrible noise echoed in the corridor; it sounded like an overripe melon being chopped in two.

The boy took this opportunity to dig into one of his socks. He got to his feet just in time to come face-to-face with Mister Corndog.

_Chup_!

Weird sound. The boy's little blade pierced flesh and breastbone. Critically for the boy it found that soft, squishy target behind it all. The man barked in surprise, gripping the handle of that little knife in surprise. With his other hand he gripped the boy's hair. He fell against the child. His big black aviator sunglasses fell to the floor, and for the first time the pair locked eyes with each other.

Mister Corndog heaved ragged breaths, his bloodshot eyes glaring at that knife sticking out of his chest. He held the knife grip tight and forced it out of his body. It wasn't the only thing to come out, and as a river of hot blood cascaded from his body the man quickly brought that knife up to the boy's face. The boy grabbed his arm with both hands, but it was like a sapling trying to push back against a live oak. Mister Corndog narrowed his eyes, blinking unsteadily, and he thrust that blade forward with all his might.

The boy sputtered as it sank in. Mister Corndog desperately tried twisting it around, but he didn't have the energy. The man took a few staggering steps backward, letting out a mess of ragged coughs. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto his back.

The boy sank to his knees. He wheezed, and his wheezing brought no air to his lungs. He brought his slender hands to either side of his throat and took delicate hold of the knife handle. Slowly, so slowly, he began removing the blade, feeling it slide out with uncomfortable ease. Afterward he tightened one hand over his throat, but still he got no pressure for his trachea. When he tried drawing breath again he got a hot surprise in his innards: blood was pouring into his lungs. He saw butterflies on the edges of his vision, and then he saw some very dark clouds.

He tried to curse. Couldn't.

The boy fumbled with the small knife; he managed to get it into his pocket. He craned his head, getting one last look at Mister Corndog lying on his back, and then the clouds took his vision. He didn't remember his face hitting the concrete floor.

He did remember opening his eyes a few minutes later.

He coughed. Blood in the lungs. That didn't last long. With his first heaving breath he drew a long shuttle of air into his body, and it filled those young lungs to the brim, melting the blood away. He tried raising one arm, and then another. No dice. He dug his knees against the concrete and forced his rear off the ground, supporting the front of his body with his forehead. And he breathed. Breathed. Breathed. That was the key: _breathe_.

Finally he got some feeling in his arms, then his hands. All the tingles went away, and at last he got some rudimentary control over the limbs. He forced himself up, barely, and struggled like an inchworm across the floor. He got to Mister Corndog's side, forcing his body up on top of the man. He slipped his hand into his pocket and fumbled with that small knife.

Suddenly the body beneath him heaved. Mister Corndog let out a sputtering cough. The boy struggled to get up the man's body and he leaned against his face. His vision still swam, and there were still butterflies at the edges of his eyes, but when he came face-to-face with that man's bloodshot, furious eyes he felt his heart explode into a gallop.

Mister Corndog flailed with his arms; he got one hand on the boy's back and dug his nails into it. With the other he tried to grip the boy's vulnerable throat, but the boy ducked this. He quickly forced himself to his knees, held that stubby knife over his head with two hands and then...

It was a dead-center stab. From there he held the handle taut and made a wish. The boy whipped his whole body from side to side as he twisted the blade. He twisted so hard that the wooden handle snapped a bit, causing a splintery chunk to break off and bounce across the floor. Still, he didn't relax his grip. This wasn't the first time. He knew the amount of strength needed, and the minimum amount of damage that had to be dealt for—

Lightning burst throughout the corridor. It singed his skin, making his ears ring, erasing his sense of smell. The force was enough to toss the boy against the wall. As soon as he hit the ground he rose; his knees felt like springboards. He extended his arms as he felt the 'rush' surge through his groin, up his innards, through his chest, along his neck—

"_RAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH_!"

He salivated, mouth wide open. Electricity flowed freely between his top and bottom teeth. He felt as if he might levitate off the ground at any second. His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest.

And his mind! He—

The pyrotechnics ended with a quick burst of white light, and the boy dropped to the floor. He got to one knee quickly, breathing hard, and took one last look at the messy remains of Mister Corndog.

He tried to curse. Couldn't.

The boy shook his head. He quickly got to his feet and stumbled over to the man's body. He got the man's wallet out of his jacket and took every bill he could find. It was only a little under thirty bucks. He tossed the wallet aside and then started jogging back out of the tunnel. Right before he reached the public area of the stadium he skidded to a halt, looking down at his body. His jersey shirt was a horror show of blood. One side of the bright orange shirt read O-R and the other read E-S. The other three letters were submerged under a river of drying blood. He stripped it off and used the back of the shirt to mop up as much blood from his skin as possible. His jeans were a loss as well, but at least the dark denim hid the blood well-enough. They'd have to do, at least. He could get away with being shirtless— at least for a little while— but not bottomless. After he got himself barely presentable he inched open the door to the service tunnel and stepped out into the underside of Memorial Stadium.

He'd been lingering down here after the game, part of him sulking over the thrashing his Orioles had just taken, and part of him just flat-out looking to pass the time. Idle thinking, mostly. If there's one thing he knew how to do, it was pass the time. That was when Mister Corndog snatched him up, leaping out from that half-closed service door. He was lucky there were still a few people milling around; otherwise Corndog would have just taken that hatchet to the back of his neck right away. He'd be setting off his own little lightshow before he even realized he was dead.

He walked mechanically, purposefully, and managed to find a souvenir stall with its window still propped open. A gray-haired man busily boxed up his wares. He was facing the wall and didn't see the boy approach.

"Hey," the boy called.

"Hey, yourself," the man answered. "You stragglers make it hard to close up shop, doncha?"

"Sorry," he said. "I need a shirt."

"Eh, yeah..." the man finished closing up one of his boxes before turning to face the boy. When he did his wrinkled eyes widened. He smirked, amused. "Yeah, kiddo, it looks like you do, doncha?"

He must've been quite a sight, highlighted under the deep yellow floods of the stand. Other than his obvious bare chest the boy was a mess: his coal black hair was tossed wildly about, like a bed of thorns. He felt his insides trembling in the aftermath of that fight, but he sternly willed his iron blue eyes _not_ to. He'd come to learn very quickly that those blue eyes of his were striking. Not 'pretty', necessarily, and not quite attractive, either; there was too much 'iron' in the blue for them to look anything but out of place on his otherwise unremarkable face. At first glance other people's eyes were naturally drawn up there, and if the boy didn't show a good game with them then anyone could see through his front like a wet piece of paper. With his hair in such a wild state the little nubs in front of his ears were probably visible, showcasing those curious little gray roots. Then there was his nose, too, busted sometime in the past, still off-kilter. But that didn't bother him. In point of fact, he kept his nose crooked by design. But those gray roots in front of his ears were a different story. He hated them, desperately, and he always tried to conceal them. It was probably his only point of vanity, really.

The boy handed the man some bills.

"This enough?" He asked.

The man nodded, taking the bills.

"Should be," he said. "So, were you really that fed up with the team, eh?"

"What?"

The old man smiled:

"Didja burn your team shirt right after the game, hmm?"

It took a minute for him to get the joke. When he did he gave a quick, emotionless smile:

"No. My dad spilled his beer on me. But I think he was aiming for the team dugout..."

The old man chortled, nodding:

"Sorry sight," he agreed. "Figure we coulda got _one _run on those Tigers, at least. They're embarrassing us on a regular basis now, aren't they?" He looked over all the shirts hanging behind him.

"Now, then: you got a player preference?"

He scanned the shirts briefly:

"Ripken," he pointed. "Definitely."

"Ah, at least he was _one_ bright spot today, wasn't he?" The man took a #8 shirt off the wall and handed it to the boy.

"I wouldn't call one hit from three at bats a 'bright spot'..." he pulled on the shirt.

"Well whaddya want: we had like three hits _total_ today, right? Heh. Gotta take the bright side wherever you can find it, doncha?" The man noticed the boy squirming uncomfortably in the shirt. "Fit alright?" He asked.

"Perfect."

It was probably too small for him by a size, but he ignored the misfit. He wasn't easy to shop for, being too skinny for his own good, and too lanky to fit into a traditional children's clothing size. As he'd been told in the past, finding clothes to fit his body was like trying to find a 'sweater for a garden snake'. He always liked that analogy. It made him smile. But, he was also told, it was only a matter of time before he grew into his body. 'Snakes stay snakes, but boys shape up, eventually. Most of 'em, at least.'

He smiled again, briefly, before his face quickly fell into a sullen frown.

"You alright, kid?" The old man asked.

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah," he nodded. "Just, uh, trying to focus on that bright spot..." he began wandering off.

"Hey, kid," the old man called.

He looked back at him; the man held up five dollar bills, waving them about:

"Take 'em," he handed them to the boy.

"Why?" He asked.

"Beer-spill discount. Tell your old man to watch his aim next time. You only get one."

"Kinda like a 'bright spot', huh?" He stared at the bills, fanning them in his hand.

"Now you're getting it." The man winked.

He looked up at the man, thanking him again, and then quickly shuffled out of the ballpark as fast as his feet could take him. He got to a crosswalk when the harsh squeal of tires startled him: a police car bumped the curb, and two officers quickly raced past him, heading for the stadium underside. More sirens sounded in the distance.

Hairs stood on the nape of his neck. He found a taxi idling down the street, and quickly dumped himself inside. He had to share that taxi with the driver's cheesesteak; from the smell of it the thing was so loaded with onions that it could be used to commit a war crime, but the kid couldn't exactly be snooty about his escape plans, now.

"103 West 27th," he told the cabbie. "Step on it."

The cabbie slowly turned around in his seat; a scowl wormed over his fat face:

"Did you _really _just say that, kid?"

He quickly flashed the man an overly-sunny smile, beaming with his white teeth:

"Pleeeease?"

The cabbie narrowed his eyes. He faced forward and put the car in gear, muttering something about 'asshole kids' as he drove off.

The boy faced forward, watching as cop car after cop car raced by them. Their flashing lights reflected in the boy's cold blue eyes. He maintained the composure of a corpse.

"Jeez, whadda think they got goin' on here?" The cabbie muttered. "They gotta have every cop in this precinct on the warpath. Bet a mint we get backed up right to hell." He smiled smugly. "Easy enough for _my _end of things, kid, but I guess it's not for you. You got places to be, doncha? And in a hurry, too."

The boy absently shook his head, keeping his eyes locked forward as more police cars passed:

"No," he muttered. "I've got all the time I need..."

x

x

x

Black dress shoes clicked on the concrete. The corridor narrowed, and near its end a large white sheet lay bunched up over a body. The walls here were very drab, befitting a service corridor. They were all composed of untreated bricks, cheerless and unpainted, except all around that covered up corpse. From the look of things at least a dozen pints of blood had been unceremoniously splashed all around the floor and walls. The scent was intoxicating: iron and rot merged together in a delicate symphony of flavor. The scent brought flashes of color to his eyes, like fireworks.

It was very neat.

The man softly sang to himself as he walked, spinning a black umbrella in his hand:

"A holiday, a holiday, the first one of the year.

He came to the church of the horse's hide, the gospel for to hear."

One of the many police officers on the scene recognized him and raced to his side:

"Agent Noirbarret," he shook the man's hand. "Sorry to pull you off your vacation; when I phoned your office I had no idea—"

"Not a problem, lieutenant. Not at all. I'm always interested when I find a case that may fit my profile."

"Now, I mean, we're not sure that it does, exactly, sir, but—"

"I'll tell you if it does."

"Oh, of course." The police officer led him to the tarp. "Well, what we've got is—"

"This body," the man looked around the corner at a second tarp, pointing.

"Stadium employee," the officer said. "Ten year veteran. Uh, looks like he took a hatchet to the face."

"Hatchet?" He asked.

The officer led the man to a bloody silver hatchet lying beside the other body. The man snapped on a latex glove and got to his knees. He ran a finger along the hatchet's edge, closing his eyes.

"Now, that's one of two weapons used, here," the officer said. "Our vic under this tarp has a sport coat on him—"

"Not the most suitable ballpark attire," the man noted.

"That's what we thought. Now, it's possible that he brought that thing in under the jacket. Maybe _he _axed the janitor."

The man turned his head and looked up at the lieutenant. His cold eyes fixed on him with a penetrating gaze.

"Ah, no pun intended," the officer muttered.

The man got to his feet:

"That leaves the question: who axed the 'axer'?"

"Ah, now here," the lieutenant knelt down and drew the tarp off the second body. "This part here is, uh, what we think might fit your profile."

The man's eyes widened. He knelt down over the corpse, eyeing its severely mangled neck. He passed one hand over it, barely hovering his fingertips over the wound, as if he was splashing his hand along the surface of a pool of water. He whispered to himself:

"...the gospel for to hear..."

"Now, Agent Noirbarret, you feds don't share that much information with us. Not that I'm complaining, you know. I am, I guess, but never mind. All I know is that you got a memo out to us looking for any cases involving 'decapitations'. That's weird enough, but this scene's even weirder. Vic's wallet was rifled through and he doesn't have any cash on him. Robbery _could _be a motive—"

"It isn't," the man whispered.

"And there's the obvious overkill, too. Guy's whole neck is a mangled wreck. I don't know if that qualifies as a 'decapitation' to you, but—"

"It does." The man stood up. He put his gloved hand to his nose and closed his eyes, inhaling slowly. When he opened his eyes he glared at the lieutenant:

"What about the weapon that did _this_?" He pointed at the corpse.

"Preliminaries say it's a small blade. No bigger than three, maybe three and a half inches. We think it's serrated on one side, smooth on the other, and sharp as fuck all around."

"It was _not _recovered here?"

The lieutenant shook his head.

"No. At least, not _all _of it..."

"Show me."

They moved down the corridor and came to a yellow police marker. It rested beside a small fragment of untreated wood. The man took out a pair of tweezers from his breast pocket and picked up the wood, turning it over slowly.

"There's an insignia of some kind on the side," the lieutenant got on one knee beside the man.

The man found it: five lines, all radiating out from a central point, with a fastener holding them together at their centers.

"Supposed to be, like, a bundle of sticks, or something?" The lieutenant asked.

The man shook his head. He dropped the wood back on the ground and stood up.

"Arrows," he whispered. "Five arrows, all bundled."

"What's that mean?"

"That means the weapon this belongs to is a _sgian_-_dubh_."

"Er... uh..." the lieutenant scratched his head. "And what's _that _mean, exactly?"

The man took off his glove and pressed it into the lieutenant's hand:

"It means this is now an FBI matter, lieutenant. I'll have my team here in one hour. Please see that all your work thus far is put together into a nice, organized bundle for us, would you?"

The man tromped off before the lieutenant could say a word. His dress shoes clacked urbanely on the concrete as he walked. He stared down at the floor, again singing to himself quietly:

"And when the gospel, it was spoke, he cast his eyes about.

And there he saw the penitent, walking in the park."

He moved beyond the service corridor. When he was out in the open, alone, his countenance changed. Cold, hard lines burned into his face, like ugly cracks in granite. His black eyes roiled, and he had to draw a slow, cool breath to calm himself. When he spoke again it was in a slow, dark whisper:

"And there he saw the Penitent... walking in the park."


	2. Cradling Methuselah

"Cradling Methuselah"

**Baltimore – 1984**

As soon as he got out of the cab he leapt up the narrow steps in twos, racing for the weathered awning stretched before the narrow brown row house. He got to his knees in the dirt beside the door, digging around for that plastic rock holding the door key. When he finally found it he tipped it over to get at the key, and that's when he noticed the clacking of the key inside the plastic container, courtesy of a tremor in his hands. He wagged his head, taking a tighter grip on the rock. He stilled his hands with effort, and forced the key out onto the ground.

Once inside he immediately wiggled out of his bloody jeans and stuffed them in the fireplace, dousing them in lighter fluid before setting them ablaze. He knelt before the fire for a time, watching the clothing smolder and then burn, his blue eyes cold and distant. Eventually he snapped out of his daze and noticed the obvious bloodstains on his underwear. He added these to the fire and then raced upstairs to take a shower.

He stood under the nozzle with one arm supported on the wall and cranked the hot water knob as far as it would go, letting the water scald him clean. It was too hot, but he didn't really notice, not until the blisters started spotting up on his arms, back and neck. He felt his skin sagging, as if it would slough off entirely, and so he killed the water and lumbered out of the shower. He sat on the side of the tub, staring at his leathery, blistered body in the mirror.

"So..." he muttered. "You were there when a guy died... and that's bad... but you were seen by... well, by not too many people... so... y'know..."

He shook his head, getting to his feet. He went across the narrow hallway and into his bedroom. There were three beds in the room, one a single, and two bunks, but only one showed any signs of being occupied. It was tidied up with all the best efforts of a young boy: sheets barely straightened, and a crooked pillow still indented from its small user's head.

He sat on the side of his bed and reached under the mattress. He pulled out a ratty brown piece of fluff. It was fur, probably a fine fur in its time, too, but now little more than mottled scraps of its former self. Its shape was barely recognizable: a fox's head, separated from the garment it once graced, with two mismatched plastic eyes beaming with a dead luster from carved sockets. The boy got to his feet and placed the macabre fox's head on the bedpost. From here the thing's vacant, lifeless eyes could watch as he paced back and forth across the room.

"See, the thing is: I wasn't seen by _too many _people, so..."

He stopped in the center of the room, arms crossed. He looked over at the fox as he started pacing again:

"Well... yeah. I thought of that. But _he_ believed me, I think. That story about spilling the beer was pretty good. It _worked_, so—"

He stopped again, and again he stared at the fox head:

"Yeah, I know: they might have cameras. But the Quickening probably broke 'em all, so—"

Again he looked to the fox.

"Right, there might've been more. And I know about the police. But those policemen were running really fast. I don't think they noticed me. Why would they? Right?"

The boy knelt down, arms over his kneecaps. He shook his head, still looking at the fox head:

"There are too many 'things'. Aren't there?" He sat down on the carpeted floor, running one hand through his hair. He looked over at the mirror on his bedroom door; his body was now free of any blister or deformity, and his skin was again as soft and as fresh as a milk-bathed calf. He stared at his own face in the mirror, slowly nodding:

"'Kay," he whispered. "That's simple, then."

He looked back over at the fox's head, and he sneered.

"_Yes_. I agree with you, Galabeg. I'm done."

He stared at the floor between his legs, shaking his head:

"I'm done, here."

X

X

X

The sun fell quickly that night, and by 10:30 he was in a chair at the head of the kitchen table. The room was shrouded in darkness; only the faint glow of sickly yellow streetlamps illuminated anything, and they barely pierced the thick curtains on the window over the sink. His face rested on the oak table, twisted to one side, and his right hand lay splayed across the tabletop, gripping a gunmetal-colored walkman in his slender fingers.

The Policescreamed into his ears, belting out an angry little tune about polluting smokestacks and Scottish lakes. It was _Synchronicity II_— his favorite song of that album— and even that tune managed to sully his mood. They were broken up, now. The band was. Sting had left the group earlier that year, and now the only thing left to mark their passing was the music they left behind. Afterthoughts. Footprints.

He opened his eyes, blinking in the darkness of the room.

"Nothing lasts forever," he mumbled.

The Police were sure to leave some mighty large footprints in their wake. They couldn't help but do so. _He'd _remember them— that's for sure— and for a long time, too. In a way, their music made them immortal.

The boy closed his eyes again, shaking his head. Hewas immortal in a different way. And he didn't leave big footprints in his wake. No, he left very small footprints. He had to.

He _absolutely_ had to.

He was still wearing that brand new Cal Ripken shirt, but he wore a faded, ratty pair of denim shorts down below. They were his. As in '_his_', his. He'd come to this place wearing them, to live with Martha in her house. The Baltimore CPS agent who brought him here offered to drive him by a clothing store on the way and get him some nicer shorts. 'Respectable' bottoms, she told him, in order to make a good impression on his new foster parent. He declined the offer. He wanted to show up here wearing his own clothing, however tattered they might be.

He knew he'd be leaving in them, one day.

Same story with the dirty Reeboks now on his feet, their soles nearly peeling off, and part of one toe exposed to the elements. He prevented Martha from throwing them out by calling them his 'lucky shoes'. There was blood on his spiffy white Keds from that confrontation with Mister Corndog, naturally, but a quick run through the washer and dryer left them nearly spotless. Those he put on one of the empty bunk beds upstairs. They were in good shape, and they'd serve another boy well. The _next _boy that came to stay with Martha.

The song came to an end, and the band started droning the same words over and over and over.

"Many miles away..." he whispered along with the fading chorus.

The cassette tape stopped with an abrupt click. Instantly the spool seized up, and then began winding the tape backward at breakneck pace. That brought him out of his funk for a moment and he grinned. He had to admit: that feature was pretty cool. The whole gizmo was pretty cool, actually. The sound was all crap, of course. These cassettes were better than 8-track (by a _little_ bit) but really it was just a gimmick to make it easier to take the music around with you. That was cool, too, but _god _was the sound terrible! Not only that, but if you were like he was, and loved playing, replaying, and _re_-replaying your favorite song again and again and again then you were in for a really bad time: those flimsy pieces of magnetic tape were liable to snap on you at any moment.

For rather understandable reasons the boy was attracted to things that could last a very, very long time.

Of course, now he was hearing all these crazy stories about some kind of new sound system: it was like a smaller, shiner 78 record, it could fit in the palm of your hand, and it used zaps from a red laser beam to make music play.

He smiled again: he'd have to pick one of those up sometime. Maybe he could listen to some tunes in the Millennium Falcon on his way to Alderaan.

Just as quickly he frowned: he remembered all the time he spent listening to Martha's 78s with her in the living room, especially on rainy days when the weather was too bad even for the other neighborhood boys to venture into. She didn't have much of a selection, mostly classical stuff, but it didn't really matter to him. He liked the music, whatever was playing, and there were those rare occasions that she surprised him with a record of his own. His prize possession was a copy of _Thriller_, all done up in that fancy packaging. She got it for him last year, and on its release day, no less. It was the same day as his birthday, anyway, so it was a convenient gift.

He stared down at his feet and absently kicked the small tartan backpack lying on its side. There was no room for records in there. Even if there were, he wouldn't have a chance to play it anytime soon. Besides, he was no thief: that record belonged to someone else: a boy named 'Penrith'.

He wasn't Penrith.

In fact, in just a few minutes', 'Penrith' would no longer exist.

Keys fumbled in the lock of the kitchen door. It swung open, revealing a stooped figure highlighted by the burning streetlamps outside. Martha toddled into the kitchen and flipped the light. She was spry for her age; at sixty years she still managed to put in half-shifts down at Union Memorial Hospital, as well as take in the odd foster child or two. He found it remarkable, actually. Lord knows he didn't know where she got the energy for it all— nursing patients during the day, tending to children in the evening and morning— especially now, in the obvious twilight of her life. It was a foreign thing to him, but he often thought that she must feel it, the winding down of all things, and the ticking of the clock. Why didn't she seem to feel tired? Why wasn't she more subdued? He was only 12, after all, and _he _felt tired all the time. Subdued. He had no clock ticking for him, either, so why was it that _she _seemed to be the one with all the energy, anyway? That was kinda backward, wasn't it?

Just one of those weird things, he guessed.

She started when she noticed the boy lying against the table.

"Oh, Pen!" She smiled. "What a surprise. But isn't it past your bedtime?"

"Wanted to see you, before bed." He waited for Martha to set her bags down and then motioned across the table, where a cold glass of iced tea bled onto a coaster. "Made you an iced tea. Kinda looks like you need it."

"Oh, you dear! It was a crazy day at the hospital. All these FBI agents were hanging about downstairs for some reason. Can you believe that?" She stood before the sink, washing her hands.

"FBI? Huh. Must've been cool." He watched her wash her hands, and his eyes were drawn to those heavy curtains above the sink. They were garish things, covered in a pattern of cardinals sailing around, singing. It was cartoony, too, since some of them looked like they were smiling. It freaked him out when he first came to Martha's house, and after that it just sort of annoyed him. He hated those curtains, and he really wished that Martha would change them.

But right now, for some reason, he thought he could stare at them for a lifetime and be happy.

Martha sat down, groaning on weathered knees, and she took a long drink from her iced tea. He stared at her, hands folded under his chin, and kept very still.

"Pen, are you alright?" She asked.

"Yeah. 'Course."

"Is your lip just trembling?"

The boy looked away, scoffing.

"What? No..."

"_Pen_."

The boy stared down at the tabletop. When he looked back up at Martha he was more composed:

"Martha, I want you to know that I've really liked living here. A _lot_. You've been taking really good care of me—"

The woman scoffed, smiling at the boy:

"That all's nonsense, Pen. You take good care of _yourself_. I've had all kinds of boys here in my time, and you're the most independent of the bunch, by far." She held up her iced tea, shaking the glass around. "Honestly, _you _take better care of _me_, Pen."

"I just don't want to be trouble. You don't deserve trouble."

The woman stared at him, her wrinkled face quizzical. She took his hand from across the table:

"Stop talking nonsense, Pen. You're no trouble. You're a good boy..."

Her dull green eyes trembled a bit, and she blinked unsteadily a few times.

"Well," she set her iced tea down and rubbed her forehead. "I was more tired than I thought!"

The boy slowly got to his feet. He rounded the table, coming to the old woman's side. He held her shoulder as she began slumping down.

"Oh...thank you, Pen!" She mumbled. "Such a good boy. So nice. You know, me being foolish, I always thought: so independent! Really is. And I always thought... you didn't _have _to be. Didn't think you needed to be. Or, at least I didn't think _you_ should think...you had to be..."

She listed forward, limp, and he carefully held her up, gently cradling her wrinkled head with his young, toned arms. The old woman lay slumped, held in the child's arms, until finally he lowered her head onto the table. He retrieved a pillow from a sofa in the living room and slid it under her head. She muttered dreamily while he worked:

"You'll...let me in... one day... know I care... and that's enough..."

"You care about me?" The boy asked.

"Mmm... hmm..." Martha's head nodded a bit.

"You want me to be happy?"

Again, a small nod.

The boy nodded, too. He gently kissed the woman's forehead and brushed her gray hair away from her face:

"Then forget I ever existed. Forget that you even knew my name."

He got to his feet. His jaw trembled, but he willed it to stop.

"'Cause I don't wanna be trouble," he whispered. "You don't deserve that..."

He grabbed his tartan backpack and the Walkman and headed for the kitchen door. He suddenly skidded to a halt at the door, turning around to look at the sleeping woman one last time. He took several steps toward her. He got to his knees again, staring at her, and he slowly reached out for her shoulder. His fingers inched forward, and just before they touched he wagged his head, scowling.

He slammed the Walkman down on the tabletop and raced out of the row house as fast as his legs could carry him.

X

X

X

A couple bus trips brought him over to the 'wrong' side of town. He wasn't tired, and sleep wasn't even on his mind. Even here, though, he couldn't hope to wander the streets all night without being challenged, and so he looked for shelter. He found a small culvert under a bridge near a children's park that fit the bill, and he spent nearly half-an-hour there, knees curled up, staring off into the distance. A rusted merry-go-round squeaked on busted hinges as it turned in the wind, and the swing set chains let out ghostly rattles with every gust. Shapes began forming in the darkness, spurred by his imagination, and in every check of wind, or every car headlight passing over the bridge above him, he saw something sinister lumbering through the darkness, coming right for him.

"What are you?" He chastised himself. "Some scaredey-cat little boy?"

Another quick gust of wind brought even more rusty turns of the merry-go-round, and more rattling from the chains.

He leapt to his feet, and he quickly grabbed his backpack and shuttled off into the night. The macabre fox's head barely peeked out of a half-zipped compartment in the backpack. The boy looked down at it and snarled:

"_Shut up_," he muttered.

He didn't have to wander long before a church caught his eye. It was an old-time, gothic-looking thing, and when he circled back through the grounds he nearly bumped headfirst into a giant, mossy tombstone. The cemetery spanned quite a distance, hemmed in on all sides by a stone wall, and near one corner there was a small shack, little more than a collection of rotted wood boards and rusty nails jutting at intervals. He managed to pry the door open, and inside it was a true mess. At one time it had housed gardening supplies and, from the smell of things, fertilizer, but now there was nothing but a few bunches of old, rotting newspaper and the long-dormant remains of a homeless junkie's camp.

He pulled the rotted boards shut and unzipped his backpack. He got out a can of Sterno and lit it up. The thing cast sickly green light on his depressing surroundings. He pulled the fox head from his bag and propped it up on an uneven shelf on the wall. The erratic firelight made its shadow dance in the darkness, almost giving it a creepy sense of life.

"So, it's all good," he mumbled. "I mean, this isn't a bad thing, really. I was gonna age-out from there soon, anyway. So, you know, it's better that I was _forced_ to leave, now..."

He looked up at the fox head, and he shook his head.

"No. Martha will be fine. She was...you know... just saying that stuff. That's the kind of stuff you say to a kid when they're staying with you. You _have _to say that kinda stuff. That's all. Doesn't mean anything. She'll be fine. She'll _forget _me. 'Course she will..."

He got to his feet and paced, nibbling on one fingernail as he spoke:

"At least I don't have to be 'Penrith' anymore, right? Always hated that name. Let's see...now... who will I be?"

He stopped and looked over at the fox head:

"You know what, Galabeg? I think you're right! I don't think I've used 'Penance' in a long time, have I? There was Pendry, Pendell, Penwyn..." he shrugged. "No, I haven't used my real name in ages. So, there's that..."

Penance put his head to the wall. He listened through the rotted wood boards, picking up all the soft sounds of the sleeping city outside: cars passing beyond the cemetery wall, the buzz of electric lamps dangling off the elegant gothic church, a hobo's shopping cart squeaking along on the sidewalk outside.

He was done with Baltimore. Finished. At least for a decade or two. Probably more, just to be safe. It was too bad. He rather liked the city, and he _loved _the ball team. Penance took off his new shirt and held it up, appreciating the bright colors. He gently folded it up and put it into his backpack. Seriously, he really shouldn't feel bad about leaving the city. After all, he'd been packing up and running away from cities long before _this_ city was even born. That's right, compared to him, this city was a spring chicken.

1729. That was it. That was when it was founded. It was on his last history test. Penance remembered because he got it wrong by over two hundred years. The teacher thought he was being a wiseass, and Johnny thought it was hilarious. That reminded him: he was supposed to spend the night at Johnny's this Friday, wasn't he? Yeah: a couple of the guys were staying there. They were gonna see that new 'Conan' movie, then go and get pizza from that place around the corner. Johnny had Atari at his place, and so they'd spend the rest of the night playing that. It was easy to know when it was time to sleep; they always had leftovers from the pizza place, and so they'd spend the night gnawing on stale pizza crusts like a group of wolf cubs picking at animal bones, until the food was all gone. Then it was time to argue over who got the bunk beds and who got the floor. Johnny always suggested 'thumb war', but he always cheated, too...

Penance stumbled to his knees. His lips trembled and his iron blue eyes quivered. He fell back against the wall of the shed, and then gathered up all those scraps of newspaper and plastered them over his body, cuddling into the pile. His eyes absently scanned the dates: 1984, 1983, 1977, 1972...

He lay on his back, limp, and the sagging floorboards carefully held him up, gently cradling his head. Penance lay slumped, his ancient body held fast in the young embrace of the city's night, until finally he turned his head to one side, curled himself up into a ball, and tried to sleep.

He couldn't. Not at first. He spent about twenty minutes bawling into those dirty shreds of newspaper, tears flowing freely, until he exhausted himself and drifted into unconsciousness.


	3. Over A Muslin Tree

"Over a Muslin Tree"

**Baltimore 1984 –**

He was up early the next day, though he didn't feel like doing much at first. He lounged on stone steps beside the ruined shack, backpack slung over a nearby gravestone. Galabeg's lifeless eyes leered from the backpack's folds, gazing emptily behind the boy.

Smoke curled from a cigarette wedged between Penance's lips. He pulled a very long drag from it, expelling a mess of fumes from his nose. He sighed, leaning back down against the stone slab, and closed his eyes.

Loud squeaks and a jarring clang of metal brought him back to the here and now. A disheveled shopping cart passed by the street beyond the cemetery. From where Penance lounged it was visible for barely an instant, peeking though a narrow gateway in the high stone wall. The bedraggled man pushing it passed just as quickly, his wary eyes locking with the boy's for a millisecond.

But it was just enough.

The cart squeaked to a halt. The cemetery gate inched open and the man shuffled in. He walked with a stoop, back hunched. His eyes were sunken deep inside his head. He wore a knit cap and ratty overcoat— surplus military, from the looks of it. The vagabond looked deeply at Penance, and then the cigarette in his hand. He shook his head emphatically as he walked toward the boy.

Penance casually reached into his back pocket with his other hand; he gripped the busted handle of his little knife tight.

"Mornin'," Penance mumbled.

"No, no, no..." the man wagged a finger; it was covered by a dirty, threadbare glove. He pointed at the cigarette. "That just don't do, does it?"

Penance put the thing between his lips again, and again he blew a mess of smoke out his nose:

"What 'don't do'?"

"Come on, kid: how old are you?"

Penance cocked his head, brow arched.

"Well?" The man crossed his arms.

"Gimme a minute," He muttered, again expelling smoke. "I'm not so good at math."

"You a little smartass, are ya?"

"Not usually."

The man motioned to Penance's backpack and Galabeg's dead eyes:

"Well, you're still young enough to cart around little stuffed animal friends, aren't you?"

Penance shook his head:

"The fox isn't a friend of mine."

"Oh. What is it, then?"

"He's a _smartass_." Penance smirked.

The man glared at him, a huff of wet air whistling through his nose. He then noticed a tree behind the ruined cemetery shack; it was completely festooned with toilet paper, to the point that it was unclear where the paper ended and the tree began.

"You vandalizing shit in _here_, you li'l punk?"

"No," Penance answered. "But I do think it looks kida neat, though. A little like a tree in a clootie well."

"What the hell're you talkin' about?"

"Clootie trees," Penance expelled smoke from his nostrils. "_Wishing _trees. They grow in sacred spots. Wishers tie their wishes to them— little scraps of paper— and hope they come true. In really popular wells those trees can get so covered in wishes that they look like they're fakes. You know, like they're part of a cardboard set, or something."

The hobo furrowed his brow. He considered Penance with a crooked scowl.

"It's, uh, more of a UK kind of thing," the boy mumbled.

"So, you made your own little cootie tree, didja?"

"_No_."

"You tell the truth, now!"

"Would I be hanging out here, just smoking a cigarette, if _I _was the one who papered this tree?"

The man opened his mouth, rotted teeth at the ready, but then he stopped all at once, considering the boy's words. He shrugged, grunting.

"It almost makes me a little happy to see a tree like this, though," Penance craned his head up. "It's almost like there's a million prayers dangling up there, right in the air." He looked back over at the hobo. "'Course, this isn't a wishing tree. It's vandalism, like you say. It's not something sacred. Vandalism like that is kinda _unholy_, actually. Isn't it? It's not the kind of thing that should be on holy ground. Unholy things..."

Penance stared down at his ratty Reeboks. He absently ground one heel against the mossy stone.

"Unholy things... don't belong on holy ground," he whispered.

"Well, I salute you, sir. Li'l Cap'n Obvious, aren't ya? Seriously, though: you can't be smokin' that cigarette, kid."

"Since when?"

"Since, like, _forever_, you little shit!"

Penance shook his head. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stared at the burning tip.

"Nope. That's not true. Kids used to smoke all the time."

"Yeah, well most of 'em are smarter, today. Now, you wanna go sneak a puff in the school bathroom, like you're the Fonz, or something, that's one thing. Long tradition of stupid kids doin' _that_—"

"Mmm-mmm," Penance shook his head. "They smoked out in the open. Nobody cared. It was a reward. For a good day's work."

"'Work'?"

"Yeah. You put in your hours, you get a nice smoke break in the middle of the afternoon."

The man leaned against a gravestone. He chuckled, shaking his head:

"Excuse me? What _exactly _do we have rolled up in that cigarette, kid?"

"They're Camels. Unfiltered." Penance put the cigarette back between his lips, but a disapproving glare from the hobo made him remove it again. "And this was back in the 1850s; coal mines were popping up all over the east coast and in the UK. Got really big in places like Scotland, too..."

"Hate to break it to you, kid, but my granddaddy did his time in the Pennsylvania coal mines, and it's the kind of work that wears a grown man down to his bones. Kids aren't used for _that_. Never have been. Average coal miner could bench press about five of you."

"Sure could." Penance nodded. "Kids didn't _mine_ the stuff. Men would rip up all the coal chunks out of the veins, and then they were brought up to the surface in these huge, messy piles, all mixed up with other stuff that the company didn't want, and couldn't use. That's where the kids came in; they took all those messy piles and beat them apart with rock hammers, getting those giant chunks down to a small enough size where they could be burned right, and tossing out all the other junk that got mixed in. They called them 'breaker boys'."

"Just where did you learn about all that, huh?"

Penance wedged the cigarette back between his lips and glared at the man with icy eyes:

"_History_."

"Well, it sounds like tough work. Dangerous. Must've been hard on 'em."

"It was. But then, on breaks, you get to crawl out of the mine and go off a ways to some shady trees, lie down on the grass." He pulled the cigarette from his mouth; his eyes became empty and distant. "You feel a cool breeze, and it's really nice to feel after all that time in the earth. You could always tell where the breaker boys took their breaks, 'cause the grass underneath was always dry and ashy-looking. Place smelled like sweat and dust, and cigarette smoke, too. Breakers were usually kids, but the company also let some elder miners do that workm if they couldn't cut it with a pickaxe anymore. Y'know: if a guy really _had_ been 'worn down to his bones'. Anyway, those old guys were generous with their cigarettes, but usually only if the boys let them yap on and on and on about how much better things were back in 'their time'..."

The hobo squinted at Penance. The corner of one lip was bunched up tight, as if he were sizing him up.

"Everybody thinks things were better back in the 'their time' I guess," Penance mumbled.

The hobo shook his head:

"You're a weird kid, you know that?"

"Thanks," Penance gave the man a wry smile and threw him a mock salute.

The man moved closer to him and he reached the stone steps below the ruined shack. Penance held the knife in his back pocket even tighter, pulling it all the way out, but keeping it hidden behind his back.

The hobo held out his hand:

"Weird or not, kid, I can't let you go on your way with those smokes..."

Penance flicked his cigarette down on the ground; his rusty eyes drilled into the man:

"Are you a thief?" He whispered.

"You gonna _make _me be one?"

"I could kick and shout," Penance smirked. "You'd go to jail."

The hobo reciprocated the smirk:

"Hot meals and clean sheets, huh? I could bust your little jaw up, too, get me free room and board for a while longer. That might make it harder for you to wrap your lips around a cigarette for a while."

The pair stared each other down for a few seconds, both of their eyes intense.

"Of course," the man drawled, "that's just 'cause I'm a civic-minded fellow..."

Finally Penance gave in; that little smirk devolved into a laugh. He tossed the Camels to the man. He stuffed them into his dirty coat, chuckling a bit himself:

"You think you're just like Tatum O'Neal, don't you?"

"What? Like in _Paper Moon_?" Penance cocked his head.

"Figured you'd know that movie."

"Yeah. I do. You think I'm like the character she played?"

The man nodded.

"A wise-beyond-their-years con artist?" Penance asked.

The man shook his head:

"Oh, no, kid. Nothing like that. I just think you look a whole lot like a little girl, that's all."

The boy's lips puckered. Penance scoffed, again letting loose a small chuckle as he watched the man toddle off.

"Hey," he called after the hobo. "You wanna _earn_ those cigarettes?"

The man looked back at the boy, who held a small wad of bills in one hand.

"And maybe some icing on the top?"

"What are you talking about, kid?"

"I need a little help with something..."

X

X

X

He banked the car hard, bouncing his jet black mustang against the curb. In once genteel motion he was out of the vehicle and gliding across the street, black umbrella clacking on the oil-stained asphalt as he moved like a spirit over the oily ground. He met a man coming out of an apartment complex; that man wore a gold-embossed FBI vest.

"Agent Noirbarret," the other man said. "Now how's that for punctual!"

"Always," Noirbarret smiled with his pearl-white teeth. "What are our preliminaries?"

"Swept the apartment, top to bottom. Guy's got a real hard-on for Indian stuff. Uh, not the _India _Indian. Tomahawk and tail-feathers kind of Indian. No cowboy stuff, oddly enough. You'd think they'd be just like mac 'n cheese, right?"

Noirbarret rolled his black eyes. Just then another agent emerged from the building:

"They're ceremonial Native American relics, Agent Noirbarret. Looks like he fancied himself quite the collector. _Bunch_ of pieces up there, and most of them authentic from what I can tell. Most if them seem to be genuine Lakota Sioux."

Noirbarret gave the man an odd frown:

"You carrying an encyclopedia set with you, agent?"

"Ah, no. Kind of a hobby, sir..."

"Ah," Noirbarret nodded.

"There were pictures, too. For some reason a bunch of them seem to be of the same Sioux warrior."

The agent handed Noirbarret a pack of faded photos. He looked them over briefly and then nodded, absently clacking his umbrella against the curb.

"Lone Horn..."

"What's that, sir?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing."

"Obvious family resemblance, there. Remarkable, really. Probably looking at a great-great granddaddy, give or take a 'great'..."

"Well," the first agent said, "guess it's a fair bet that our Indian enthusiast here was the owner of that silver hatchet over in Memorial Stadium. The plot thickens, doesn't it?"

"I assume you two have done more than just look over our poor victim's curios and relics?"

"Please," the first agent scoffed. "Whaddya think Uncle Sam's paying us for?" He handed Noirbarret a folder, and Noirbarret rifled through its contents in short order.

"This looks like an itinerary," he said. "We've got a coffee shop, an arcade, a pizza restaurant, a public library, a basketball court. And then here we've got..." His voice slowed even as his eyes widened. "We've got mathematics... language arts... social studies... geography… physical education—"

"Like a planner for a kid's schedule," the other agent said. "Now we got a couple rather creepy details to add to this. For one thing, Mister Indian Culture up there doesn't have any kids. At least not that we know of—"

"No. He does not." Noirbarret spoke with certainty.

"And for another thing," the other agent said, "we found that folder in a hidden compartment in his desk. That drawer was hidden but good, too. Real 'cloak and dagger' stuff—"

"Or an ancient Indian secret," the other agent chuckled.

"That folder was the _only _thing in there. Our guy wanted to keep this stuff very hush-hush. So, I mean, I dunno. Are we thinkin' some kind of pedo thing, or what?"

"And does it, just perchance, somehow tie into our vic's untimely fate in Memorial Stadium?"

Noirbarret practically threw the folder back into the agent's hands. He turned on his heels and walked back toward his car.

"Yes, it does," he muttered.

"Uh, Agent Noirbarret," one of the agents followed him. "If the itinerary is linked to the murders, maybe the next step should be to work over all these places, triangulate them with the nearest public school, then see if we can nail down whatever kid was being stalked."

Noirbarret got into his mustang and revved the engine. He shook his head, grunting dismissively:

"Never mind that," he grumbled. "If I'm right, then that child no longer exists..."

Noirbarret gunned it, spinning his wheels, and he left that agent in a fog of questions and burned rubber.

He barreled through the streets of Baltimore, wheeling about in reckless abandon, until he finally bumped the curb at Memorial Stadium. He stood on the sidewalk for a time, and then he went to pacing. He went to the park's main exit and stood on the street corner, closing his eyes and drawing a breath.

"Fire in my eyes, and blood on my britches..." his hands opened and closed rapidly and he drew a sharp breath. "Sirens closing in, police cars wheeling all around me." He opened his eyes. "Heart races, legs jitter..." he looked across the street at a bus stop; several people sat on the bench, waiting.

"_Can't _wait..." he muttered.

Suddenly a tubby arm bounced into his well-pressed suit. He reeled, growling, as a fat man waddled past him with oblivious haste. He bore a greasy cheesesteak in two hands, as if holding a sacred relic aloft.

Noirbarret's sour disposition changed when he saw the man lumber into the driver's seat of a taxi cab. He approached the passenger window and leaned his head inside:

"Afternoon," he cooed.

"Ah, ain't that just the way," the cabbie snorted. "Guy spends two hours running a totally dead morning and _just_ gets his hands on his lunch, and then it's all work, work, work—" his voice slowed to a crawl when he looked at the passenger window, only to be confronted by Noirbarret's FBI badge.

"Uh, er, hey," the cabbie straightened up and put his cheesesteak down. "Now, uh, sorry about taking up the curb, here, officer—"

"_Agent_."

"Agent, right! I mean, I know it's 'no parking', and all, but I only idled the thing for a minute, you know, just to run in an' grab me a cheesesteak from that place around the corner."

"Engine idling is also illegal," Noirbarret said.

"Uh... oh, is it? Heh. I mean, who can keep up with every single little reg, huh?"

"People who pay attention to details." The agent's icy voice grew considerably colder. He narrowed his brow at the cabbie. "Now, I would very much appreciate it if you could give me some details..."

X

X

X

Penance stood in front of the window display, hands in his pockets. It was a colorful thing, trumpeting all things Sony-related, and at the center it brightly advertised the new Walkman D6C Pro.

The hobo came up behind him. He leaned forward to read the display.

"Got a thing for musical gadgets, do you?"

Penance shook his head:

"No. Not really. I, uh, knew a boy who had one."

"Well, anyhow, here's your ticket." The man handed Penance a yellow card.

Penance nodded absently. He pulled a small wad of cash out of his shorts, all his remaining money, and held it out for the man. The man shook his head, closing Penance's fist around the cash:

"Forget about that," he growled. "Man's gotta have standards, doesn't he? For mine: I don't take money from kids."

"But cigarettes?"

The hobo smiled:

"Man's gotta have _standards_, I said. He doesn't exactly have to be a _monk_."

"Thanks," Penance said.

"Well, good luck to you, kid. Hope you can meet up with that family of yours in Philly."

Penance moved to cross the street, eyeing the station and its idling silver buses. Before he could take a step, however, the hobo fired off one last line:

"Or whatever it is you're doin'. Whatever you _think_ you need to lie out your ass to hell and creation about, that is..."

Penance looked back at the man; he opened his mouth, indignant, but the hobo held up a finger:

"Don't bother, kid. It's your eyes. The rest of your body does alright, spinning those yarns. But your eyes, well..." He shrugged. "I know a thing or two about lyin', in my time, and for my advice to most people, I'd tell 'em they're too green; they're not practiced enough. Their eyes go quivery, darting all about, madcap, or just being _strange_ in how they move, and how they react, when they get to fibbin'. Yours? Nah, that's not your problem. Your problem is that you have very _old _eyes."

"'Old'?"

He nodded:

"_Practiced _eyes. They're like sheets of ice. Can't get a read on anything. And therein lies the giveaway, kid."

"What 'giveaway'?" Penance took a step toward the man, teeth bared. That was an insult to the boy's personal honor; he took significant pride in his time-honored ability to lie out his ass.

He was kinda strange that way.

"Your 'tell', kid. When you lie."

"Just what the heck do I _do_ when I lie?" He barked.

The hobo smiled:

"You look a person straight in the eyes, all honest and unflinching."

Penance's head reared back like a startled ostrich.

"I think, in my humble opinion, the only time you ever tell the truth is when you start lookin' around, ashamed. Embarrassed. And that's a pity, kid. Can't imagine what would bring you to act like that."

"What do you know, anyway?"

"Easy, kid. Don't take offense. All I mean is that I wish you luck, with _whatever _you're doin', and wherever you go. And forget about the cigarettes, hmm? It's a filthy thing..."

Penance stared at the asphalt of the road; he shrugged:

"I don't do anything that's bad for me," he grumbled.

"Ah: there it is! There it is!"

Penance looked up at him.

"What'd I tell you?" The hobo laughed. "There it was again: the truth. At least as _you _see it, kid." He walked off chuckling to himself. "That's the thing about youths: they all believe that they're immortal, or something..."

Penance watched the man toddle off. After a moment he wagged his head and crossed the street. People were boarding a whole row of buses at the station, and it took him several minutes to find the one with 'Philadelphia' done up in ugly narrow letters on its dirty placard. He lingered around the line, watching as people got on board, mostly in groups of one or two. Finally he spied what looked like a young mother leading her two kids onboard. Penance slipped in behind the younger children, getting as close as he could to the family, and sure enough the driver took for granted that Penance was in that group when he tore his ticket.

The boy quickly raced to the back of the bus, wedging himself into a window seat in the shadows. He put his tartan bag on the seat next to him and curled up against the window. Before he forgot he quickly unzipped the front pocket of the bag; Galabeg's plastic eyes gaped from the pack, leering across the seats opposite.

The driver had the bus radio set to an oldies station. It was soft, and the noise mostly garbled through speakers that must've been older than _he _was, but suddenly Penance was surprised to hear Nat King Cole crooning through the cabin:

"Said it's only a paper moon  
Sailing over a cardboard sea,  
But it wouldn't be make believe  
If you believed in me."

The boy smiled, shaking his head. Tatum did that movie in— what was it?— 1973? Yeah. Give or take two hundred years, right? She'd be about 20, now.

And _she _could smoke, if she wanted to.

He'd seen that movie in theaters. He remembered the plot quite well: a con artist goes running off with a girl who may or may not be his daughter, and she's at least as oily as he is. They play their cons, scrape nickels together to survive, run elaborate schemes, all that depression-era junk that people nowadays thought you had to do during the depression to actually survive. Through it all there's plenty of hijinks (it's Hollywood: where would they be without hijinks?) and plenty of moments where the two almost part ways. Of course, being the kind of movie it was, they didn't, and in the end the pair ride off into the sunset, tacitly agreeing to keep on surviving together. One for all, and all for one...

Penance stared down at Galabeg's dead eyes as the bus lurched forward. He shook his head again. Yeah: he remembered that movie pretty well.

And he hated it.

While he watched the city roll by from his window Penance thought back to all the times he actually had anyone like that in his life. Someone who knew where he was coming from, and someone he knew enough to trust— at least in the most _basic_ sense of the word—with the most _basic_ facts about himself.

Kinda like a '_Paper Moon _parent'. Maybe. Only not really.

He remembered the one that left the biggest mark on him: his first. The man who found him bleeding, bones broken, crushed under a horse's hooves in that miserable little camp on the Scottish coast. It was right after the Battle of Dunbar, when Oliver Cromwell was scorching earth all across the lowlands, handing those rebellious Scots their rear ends. Often their heads, too.

"1650," he whispered.

And he was _not _off by a few hundred years on that one.

This was not his first 'death', and it wasn't even the most memorable, truth be told. But it was the one that introduced him to his teacher: a man from whom he'd learn the rules of the Game he was fated to play, like it or not, and from whom he'd learn the skills that could keep him alive.

Penance also learned the 'first lesson' from him, and looking back, it was the only lesson that mattered. That was the only lesson that actually kept him alive for all these years:

He learned to trust _no one_.


	4. The Primeval

"The Primeval"

**Dunbar, Scotland – 1650**

He awoke sputtering, retching. He clawed at the flesh of his naked chest. Instead of rent flesh he felt tender skin, and instead of crushed bones he felt narrow ribs, all accounted for, in a row, and all intact. A wooden bucket sat beside him, and inside it a bundle of soaked cloths marinated in a brine of congealing blood. The scent stung his nose; he could taste the iron in the air.

"When a small boy comes across a panicked horse's hooves, the horse usually wins..."

He sat up. Penance blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the small tent. A shadow reclined at the entrance, highlighted by the muddy gray sky outside.

"Of course," the shadow said, "some boys' bones can be stronger than a horseshoe, can't they?"

"Who are you?" Penance demanded, scooting to the back of the tent.

"I could tell you that, child." The man said. "But, then again, I know the answer to that question. Do _you_ know that answer, I wonder?"

The boy cocked his brow:

"What, could I tell you who _you _are? Dunno. Can you guess the number I'm thinking of?"

The man scoffed. He pressed a palm to his forehead:

"Do we keep our brains squarely in our ass, child?"

"Can't speak for you," Penance mumbled.

"It's been a long time since I've suffered such a young voice to speak to me with such cheek, lad..."

"Now, when you say _cheek_..."

Shouts echoed in the air outside. The man parted the tent cloth, bringing more light into the cramped surroundings. Men on horseback raced by the tent, all of them clad in loose chain armor and helmets, decked in red sashes and bearing red standards on the side of their saddles.

"Those... those are Parliamentarians." Penance whispered. "Where are the Covenanters? The Scots? What happened?"

The man scoffed. Penance could see him better, now. He was in his early 50s with long, straight hair colored gray like a fogbank. His hair reached his shoulders, dangling like wet ropes. His face was pockmarked with uneven bumps, very like the face of the moon, and his two hazel eyes were wide and large, though quite sunken into his head. His body was wiry, very thin, and very sleek, although his upper body was disproportionately toned, and relatively large muscles bulged out the sleeves of his shirt. He chuckled at Penance's question, shaking his head:

"What happened, you say? Ah, well. There's a word for it, and a very old one, at that. It loses a bit in translation, but in this tongue I believe it would be called a 'clusterfuck'." He motioned beyond the tent. "The Covenanters— those dashing, brave, dumb-as-bricks Scots— figured that they could end the battle early. Cromwell had his Parliamentarians all stood up in a line, and our brilliant tacticians, in their _infinite _wisdom, thought to press themselves right into his midst. Oh, never mind getting caught up between a gully and a hillside. Cromwell had only to hit their right flank, _hard_, for the whole Scots' force to crumble." He shook his head, chuckling. "Ah, it's been said so often in war that a blundering enemy makes it too easy for his opponent to defeat him. I've seen as much, and many, many times. But in this battle? Ha! They'll say that the Scots _delivered_ themselves right into Cromwell's hands. Oh, those Parliamentarians are out there, now, wrangling up captives for the march south. They'll take every able man who can manage the walk back down to the borderlands and hold them down there while Cromwell moves on to Edinburgh. They'll likely topple things there in short order, too." He looked back at Penance. "Of course the English are magnanimously ignoring the older men and younger boys on the field. Honestly, I don't know whether to be grateful, or insulted..."

"You're glib about the whole thing, aren't you?" Penance said. "For one who _lost _the fight."

"I'm no rank and file soldier, lad," he snapped. "I'm a forge master."

"A what?"

"Weapon smith, child. And my weapons are unequalled. It wasn't the steel I put into the Covenanters' hands that lost this day, it was the brains in the heads of their wielders. Steel can be smoothed, and every imperfection balanced, but there is little a weapon maker can do to correct any faults in its user. And I wouldn't be so snarky about blaming anyone for losing a battle today, boy, given that _you _lost your own little battle with a horse. Didn't you?"

Penance looked down at the grass, curling his toes:

"I... uh... there was a retreat, and there were a lot of Covenanter troops running back through the camp. Some cavalry came running through, too, and I, uh, almost got trampled when—"

The man drew a loud breath, shaking his head:

"_Almost_? Spare me, lad! I found you lying out there under a broken trough. You were crushed as flat as a crepe. Oh, and you'd appreciate the odd looks I got in the aftermath, once the Parliamentarians had secured the place, as I dragged a pancaked little lad's body across the field. They must've thought I was a loon. I had to resort to weeping and shrieking and all, pretending you were my kin. Still, that helped get me enough sympathy to avoid being rounded up with the rest of the captives, so there's that."

"Glad to be helpful," Penance muttered. "Now: _who are you_?"

"My name is Uallas," he said, "and I'm much like you, _Mo Flath_ _Beag_."

The boy scrunched his face:

"Wh— what did you just call me?"

"Your Gaelic is lacking, is it? Well, that is a pity..."

Penance got to his feet:

"Listen: I don't know what you _think _you saw out there. I— I was just knocked out, and—"

Suddenly the man reached into the grass beneath him and pulled out a massive longbow. He held up an arrow with his other hand, wagging it back and forth:

"Do we need to do this the hard way, lad?"

Penance didn't quite know what he meant by that.

He wasn't gonna wait to find out.

The boy leapt up and over Uallas, who only bowed his head and sighed as Penance raced onto the muddy remains of the Covenanter camp outside. He sprinted past the curious looks of English soldiers lounging about, raiding the camp supplies, and watering their horses, and disappeared in a mess of brush. He emerged in a bank of trees and kept right on running. After a moment he stopped to catch his breath, and while standing there, hands on his knees, he heard the snap of a twig far behind him. He whipped about, blinking into the fog, and saw the faint outline of a man carrying a longbow.

Penance cursed under his breath and took off running again. He raced into dense tress, certain that any shot would be impossible through the foliage. He worked his legs in serpentine arcs, confident that his youthful stamina would more than make up for his small legs. There was no way that any codger could bring him down in _this _kind of terrain. He should be out of sight any—

_Thweeeeeeeeeeee_...

That whistling sound was kinda weird. At the time he couldn't place it. He wasn't really thinking about it, too much. Not until the arrowhead tore into him, that is.

Penance screamed, crashing hard on the ground. He rolled several times and finally came to a rest on his stomach. When he reached behind his body and caught hold of the busted arrow shaft sticking out of him he screamed again. The boy got on his elbows and crawled into the denser woods, teeth gnashing together, and rested at the foot of an oversize oak. He looked back again, surveying the busted arrow shaft, and he muffled another rage-filled scream with a handful of moss against his face.

Really? _Really_? Of all the places!

The boy twisted his body about; he got his left buttock elevated, and he wrapped his hands around the arrow shaft. He buried his face in the moss, made a wish, and then yanked up on it as hard as he could. The arrow came out with surprising ease.

The pain? That wasn't so surprising.

Once he was done screaming his head off in the moss pile he came up for air. Uallas was there, standing over him, a bemused look on his leathery face:

"I am sorry! My aim isn't what it used to be—"

"_Asshole_!"

"Well, I assure you, I wasn't aiming for _yours_. Poor lad: you do keep your brains down there, don't you? No, I was only aiming for your spine..."

Penance looked up at the man, his brow furrowed.

"Now get yourself up, lad," Uallas motioned. "You'll be close to healed up by now. Unless you wanted me to go out and find a nursemaid to kiss it for you?"

Penance snarled. He limped to his feet, giving his left rump a small massage with one hand. It wastrue, of course; by now he couldn't even feel the torn flesh.

It _still _hurt, though...

"What do you want?" The boy growled.

"That was not your first time, was it?" Uallas said. "Back there, under those horse's hooves? It was not the first time you've... well, 'died'?"

"What of it?" He snapped. "You wanna provoke me? Is that it? I don't think you do. I'm a sprite! I'm a changeling— a child of the fair folk— and _you _have just pissed me off!"

Penance took a menacing step in the man's direction, both of his fists balled, but to his surprise this little display didn't affect Uallas in the slightest.

Funny: it usually kinda did, whenever anyone _else_ discovered his little 'secret'.

"You just saw what I can do," Penance barked. "My body heals all wounds, and I can even come back to life. Do you have _any _idea what else I'm capable of doing, old man?"

The man chuckled, wiping some stray bits of moss from Penance's face, even as the boy recoiled:

"Yes," Uallas said. "No doubt you're capable of dying in even _more_ amusing ways, I'm sure—"

"I'll lay a curse on you, so help me—"

Uallas pinned Penance to the gnarled tree behind him, still smirking. The boy struggled mightily, but couldn't escape the man's grip. He screamed out another warning, which went unheeded. Then he went to flailing that bloody arrow shaft at the man, and he caught Uallas right in the cheek with it, tearing out a fearsome gash. This startled the boy.

It did not startle Uallas.

The man leaned his bloodied face down close to the boy's:

"You think you stand alone, lad? That you are the _only_ prince of all creation? Oh, no: you are not alone, child. You're of a breed that was, and _has been_, for as long as Adam walked the hallowed grounds of Eden. You are one of many, and I do not know how long you have walked. Your body's no indicator: no inch of flesh betrays your true age. Your eyes tell me that you've lived long, though, and all that time outside the bounds of the Game we play. All alone..."

Penance's rusty iron eyes were transfixed on the man's face, and he daren't even blink. As he watched, the wound on Uallas' cheek began to scab over and seal up, and as the man continued speaking even the remaining scar on his face began to melt away, like a wax figure exposed to flame.

"I can tell you this, _Mo Flath_ _Beag_: if you continue to walk alone you will die. And very...very... _soon_."

"I cannot die," Penance muttered. "My body heals me, whether I like it or not; it'll last forever—"

"_Nothing_ lasts forever," Uallas whispered. "If nothing else, the Game certainly sees to that—"

"I'm not interested in any 'games' you have to play, either—"

"That is too bad. Because the Game has an interest in _you_, lad."

Penance bared his teeth and again brandished the bloody arrowhead:

"Let me go!" He barked.

Uallas looked to one side, sighing. He released Penance from his grip, and the boy stumbled a few feet away from the man.

"I leave today," Uallas said. "There's naught left here for me to do. The Covenanters are beyond the help of any steel or weapon smith. I make for Letterewe: my home in the north. Do you know it, child?"

Penance shook his head.

"It lies on the far bank of a loch named Maree, near the western coast. It's as far north as the very tip of the Isle of Sky, and it sits in the greatest wilds of the highlands, nestled amongst the old-growth of the darkest forests. The land out there is old—_primeval_, more like— and the road is very rough—"

"I'm not going _anywhere _with you, understand?"

Uallas rolled his eyes:

"I got that impression, boy, and I'm not keen on dragging you there, kicking and screaming the whole way. No, you'll come of your own accord, and I know that, truly. I know because I don't take you for an idiot. You want the answers, don't you? Well, I won't lie and say I have them all. What I'm offering is a primer, if you like, and the lesson is quite mandatory if you've grown to love breathing in your time on this earth."

Uallas turned his back on the boy, placing his longbow in a sling on his back, and he began to walk off.

"You'll likely lose your way at times, on a trip so long and treacherous. Tell those that you meet on the road that your master sent you out into the wilds, and that you are looking for the man who crafts 'liquid steel'. Eventually, once you're deep enough in the wilds, you'll find people who will understand, and they can point you in the right direction. Some may know me as Uallas, but they have other names for me up there that you might hear." He looked back at Penance. "Do you understand, child?"

"I'm— I'm _not _going up there, old man!"

The man tilted his head and clucked his tongue. Eventually he smiled, shrugging:

"Then your brains are where I thought they were all along. Sorry to have damaged them, _Flath_ _Beag_..."

Uallas sauntered out into the mist, and as he walked he began to whistle a jaunty tune. Penance watched him as he walked, almost skipping with merriment, and he spat out a choice word for him under his breath:

"_Asshole_."

II.

It'd been a long week, all things told.

First Penance learned that, apparently, he wasn't alone with his little 'talent' for not dying. That was revolutionary enough.

But, second, he also found that his home of the past five years was an occupied city, and it was not the friendliest of times to come back. That Uallas guy might be a creepy prick, but he was also right about Oliver Cromwell's troop movements. The Parliamentarians laid siege to Edinburgh not long after the debacle at Dunbar, and it didn't take Penance long to learn the news as he ambled westward, following in the English raiders' wake. Dunbar had freed up the coast for them, and from there the English would have all the supplies they'd need to lay a long, bloody siege to the capital.

He was sorry to see the city go. Penance had fond memories of Edinburgh: the twisty streets of hard cobbled stone and cramped rows of three-story tall buildings all winding about, looked down upon by that massive castle perched high on the mighty hill at city center. One of the street boys he roamed with told Penance that the hill was actually a volcano, but that it didn't erupt anymore.

Now might be the time, Penance thought bitterly. If you couldn't drown the English in water, maybe lava would prove more effective.

Penance detoured far around the capital city, making his way further westward. He had no idea where he was going, in fact, and this was not an uncommon thing. Every five years or so (or a decade, if he was fortunate enough) he found himself wandering the road, alone, and he almost never had an idea where he'd find himself next. He was in Scotland by chance, and before that it was London. In truth, he actually really liked London, too. The boy no specific loyalty to the Scottish cause, no more than the English, anyway, and the only reason he was pissed at Cromwell's troops was because they'd forced his hand: it was time for him to move, again, and that always made him feel lonely.

It was something that was sure to get easier as time went by, he thought. No doubt, after a few more decades of moving, he surely wouldn't be bothered by it in the slightest.

Nope: not in the slightest.

It wasn't until a week later— as he bedded down in some hay outside a dilapidated barn, curled up deep in the pile to ward off the cold—that he realized he was slowly migrating northward. It had started innocently, enough: he favored the warmth of the sun on his face, rather than his back, and so he'd begun correcting his course, little by little. It wasn't until he was far beyond the bounds of any nearby village or town that he realized he was following Uallas' directions, and that realization somehow brought a chill to his blood. One early morning he set his feet to the path but found that they didn't work: his body refused the call to drive itself northward. He felt the impulse to run back south into the lowlands, or maybe east, or even run west and drown himself in the sea.

_Anywhere_ but north.

Penance overcame this chilling feeling. He willed himself northward, and as the days went by the land became more strange, and more cold. The wilds between towns stretched to great lengths, and the forests teemed with malevolent, shining eyes at night. This land was old, far beyond the grip of man, and it showed. At the few places that passed for inns along the way the boy exchanged chores for a warm meal and a dram of something hot. Half the time that 'something hot' was a half-finger of whiskey, and it was marvelous stuff for the cold, he thought. Everywhere he stopped he asked about that weird 'liquid steel' thing and the master forger who made it, but he got no answers from anyone.

His luck finally changed once he reached the low-lying banks of a place called Torridon. It was the first village he'd encountered in some time, if it could be called that, and the locals were an insular, surly bunch. But one night while he cleaned up vomit-soaked tables in the local inn he managed to strike up a conversation with a completely drunk-off-his-ass local. As soon as Penance made mention of that 'liquid steel' thing the man's glassy eyes bulged:

"Ah! So yer out to the far banks of Maree, are ya? Mind yer back out there, lad: mind it! Tha's faerie country, so's they say, at least. An' it were the Picts afore tha'. Ol' Loch Maree still brims wi' 'ere magics, so's they say. The Fairy Queen still haunts her dark isle, jus' bobbin' in the water, she does, wi' 'er ruined cathedral all done up in moss an' rot. So's they say, at least. Some call 'er Muc-sheilche— heh! the daft twats— but no: she's a kelpie, by now, for certain. Mind, child, _mind_: for a kelpie's so keen on foolin' boys an' girls to the water's edge, eager to drown 'em 'neath the waves. So's they say, at least."

'They' were very colorful, Penance thought.

"Ah, but The Norman's out there, too, working the forges at Letterewe, beyond the waters. The steel arrives by ship, ya see, down through Loch Ewe, and the whole of the land there's dedicated to workin' it. An' The Norman works it, too, jus' same as all the rest. But, for the right price, an' the right _person_, well, he can make the finest metal e'er shaped to a blade!"

"The 'Norman'?" Penance cocked his head.

"If it's 'liquid steel' tha' your master's after, lad, well, there is only The Norman to see."

He reached the south bank of Loch Maree two days later. The wind howled from the west, bearing stinging cold air from the restless sea, and the sun was buried in a grave of stillborn clouds. Penance was told that the loch ran a good distance either way, and his best bet at this point would be to cross it. The thing was not so very long across: he could see the moody hills on the far banks, as well as smoke curling along the shoreline at what must certainly by Letterewe. The boy wandered the shore, looking for driftwood. He found a suitable slab and took it into the water.

The cold loch stung his skin fiercely, and he wasn't out long, paddling on that driftwood, before his fingers and toes numbed. There were several little islands scattered in the center of the loch and he made for one of the smaller ones: a misshapen thing that was all but covered in thick trees for its 50-yard length. Once there he beached his driftwood and walked the shore, wiggling his limbs to restore the feeling. The wind still hammered his body, and that didn't help matters, so he sought a temporary refuge. He wandered into the shelter of the trees, aimlessly following the island's length. After a time he came upon a gnarled old tree that was very different from all the rest: it rose out of a small gully of water, and its body was hammered with copper coins all along the length of its trunk. All around it grew strands of a certain kind of holly plant that Penance had yet to see on his journey north. The rotted remains of paper strands still clung to its sickly branches.

"Clootie well," the boy muttered, his eyes widening. "Huh..."

It had been in disuse for many years now, obviously. In fact, the tree itself looked dead. Ironically, it may have actually died from having all those copper coins pressed into its body. It wouldn't be the wounds themselves that killed it, Penance thought, but the copper. It was a poison. That was a real indignity to the poor thing, he thought: being killed by the very people who came to you for help in the first place.

Unfortunately Penance didn't have a piece of paper on him. He settled for reaching up and resting two fingers on one of the rotted strings. He closed his eyes and whispered to himself:

"May that old crackpot not waste my time..."

He grunted. Well, that wasn't very inspirational, was it?

Penance tried again, closing his eyes:

"May I learn what it is I'm made of, exactly..."

He looked up again, nodding. That was better. That was good. Penance took a step back, but then he quickly put his fingers back on the rotted paper. He made one last wish, and this one was so ridiculous and pathetic that he didn't bother speaking it out loud.

It was his single greatest wish in the world.

But yeah: it was also ridiculous.

He'd come this far, and so he decided to follow the island to its center. He came to a small clearing and nearly tripped over a mossy stone. As he wandered all around the place he realized that there were the remains of some structure, and further in he realized what it was: some kind of church. A few arched buttresses still loomed on the fringes of the clearing, all weather-beaten and alone, the walls they supported now long since gone. There was a small well further in: a meter-wide hole in the ground ringed by jagged, uneven limestone bricks. Penance noticed something rather odd: there was a pulley system rigged up at that ancient well, and a rope descended into the black pit of its maw. None of that was unusual, per se, except for one small thing: the rope that ran down into the black water of the pit was not ancient and frayed, like everything else on the island, but instead it looked quite new.

He absently thumped the rope with one finger, plucking it like a harp string. When he did he felt something strange: a ringing noise between his ears. It was like the bells in one's head after hearing a canon fire from up close. Penance wagged his head, grunting, and moved off until he finally came to the far shore of the island.

Letterewe beckoned from the edge of the loch, even closer to him now. Penance was about to turn on his heels and wander back to his driftwood when he spotted a curious sight: a plank of wood was hidden beneath a mess of reeds on the shore. He uncovered it and discovered that it was no mere plank of wood, but rather an entire boat, and it was intact. He got to his feet and looked all around him. He called out, his young voice echoing across the dark island, but he got no answer.

That was enough to satisfy him.

After a mercifully dry crossing he banked the boat at Letterewe and wandered into the small village. Here they were well-versed on steelmaking; it was, in fact, the region specialty. They also knew 'The Norman' by a familiar name: he was indeed that curmudgeon Uallas, and Penance learned that his homestead was far up on the hills overlooking the settlement. He made it there before sunset, and as he wandered the grassy hilltops he found a curious thing poking out of the ground: it was a stone, very large— at least twice as tall as he was— somewhat phallic-shaped, and covered with strange etchings and indecipherable gibberish.

Beyond all this, near the northern edge of the hills, he finally found the man himself reclining on the grass. Uallas' eyes scanned the lowlands below him. Unending acres of old-growth trees blanketed the land, radiating out in all directions. The man's eyes were drawn to the east, where one of these trees slowly cantered to one side and then fell hard on the ground. Men set upon it, little more than ants from this distance, and Penance noticed that a good portion of the forest had been cleared in that direction.

"Wood helps start the fires for the forges," the man noted, not looking back at the boy, "and so it gives way to steel. It's the nature of things— you know— that the weak must make way for the strong. Lands like this, though, they used to be untouched. But as the ages press on, and as man's hands go wandering all about his crib, well, little does not end up bearing his fingerprints. When I look out on these horizons and I see this forest fall I feel an age ending."

Uallas finally looked back at the boy:

"But, then again, it is not the first I've felt. Nothing lasts forever..."

Penance got to his knees, still a distance from the man:

"How old are you?" He asked.

"Older than you, but younger than some."

Uallas got up, and Penance quickly did likewise.

"That doesn't answer my question," Penance said.

"I never offered you 'answers', boy, only a primer. I'm offering the lessons you need to understand the basics of your situation."

Uallas approached the boy, and Penance tensed. He did not back away, though.

"What is my 'situation'?" The boy demanded.

"To the point? Your situation is hopeless. _Completely_."

"Then why bother bringing me up here at all?"

A thin smile wormed up Uallas' face:

"Point of fact? I quite like hopeless causes. First, though, answer me this: are you willing to listen to me, and hear my voice, and _follow along _with what I teach you? Are you willing to be obedient, speaking when spoken to, and _listening _when not speaking? I will not waste my time on an idiot child whose willfulness prevents them from hearing my voice—"

Penance took a step forward:

"If what you've got to teach me is worth my time, then yeah: I'll listen."

Uallas sighed, shrugging. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder:

"_Mo Flath_ _Beag_: what I have to teach you is nothing less than the most important lesson of a lifetime. A _thousand _lifetimes, even."

Penance stared at the man's shoes, and then he slowly looked up at him. The boy nodded:

"Fine. Then I agree. When do we start?"

He didn't have time to react. Uallas' other hand came up on the other side of the boy's head and he twisted both hands about. It was almost graceful. Penance could possibly have appreciated that move.

If his neck wasn't snapping apart like a twig, that is.

The boy landed on the ground, limbs twitching erratically. He couldn't move any muscle in his body. Uallas stood over him and spoke quite calmly:

"We start tomorrow, lad. So get a good night's rest..."

And with that he planted his boot down in the boy's face, forcing darkness into his eyes.


	5. View Holloa

"View Holloa"

**Baltimore– 1984**

He knelt before the fireplace, absently poking at the char inside. He turned over a few mounds of ash; one of them held more than mere cinders. The remains of a tough piece of treated leather poked out of the pile, and letters were barely visible, seared into the animal skin.

"L... E... V... I...S."

Noirbarret mouthed the letters, smirking.

Dishes rattled in the kitchen. He got to his feet and wandered into the room. He found the woman— Martha— fumbling with cups before a whistling kettle.

"Ah, please, please, ma'am," Noirbarret cooed. He gently moved the woman out of the way. "Have a seat, please. I'll see to this."

She sat in a chair at the kitchen table, nodding sullenly.

"Th— thank you, Agent Noirbarret."

"Think nothing of it, my dear."

He put the cups down on the table and filled them with tea. The woman watched him pour, her old gray eyes quivering:

"I must admit, I'm surprised that the FBI got involved in this so quickly..."

"A pleasant surprise, I'm sure," Noirbarret said.

"Oh, of course. Anything that helps find poor Pen." The woman looked to the kitchen door; the agent's black umbrella rested against the frame. "Oh, my: is it supposed to rain, today? I...uh, was planning to put up fliers..."

Noirbarret shook his head, chuckling:

"Ah, no. Not that I'm aware of, ma'am. No, it's just that the Bureau trains us all to be prepared for anything..."

"I thought that was the Boy Scouts?"

"Heh. Well, nobody would confuse _me _for one of those, I'm sure. Now, I like to believe that I'm an honest man, and to be honest with you I do have my own 'selfish' reason for investigating your foster child's disappearance. Do you happen to know the boy's whereabouts this past Sunday, between noon and four PM?"

"Why, um, yes." The woman blinked, staring down at her tea. "Pen went to see the Orioles."

"That's not the birds at the zoo, I take it..."

"Of course not." She gave the man a wan smile. "No. The stadium. He was there all afternoon, I suppose."

"Was he with another family? Friends?"

She shook her head:

"Uh, no. I don't think so..."

"The boy was alone, then?"

When she looked up and saw Noirbarret's cold black eyes staring down at her she nodded, defensively looking away.

"Pen... he's a very independent child. It's just his way. I wouldn't ever be so permissive with another boy like that— not someone as young as Pen— but with him..."

"It's 'different', isn't it?" Noirbarret cooed.

Martha looked up at him, her wrinkled eyes trembling. She slowly nodded:

"Yes. It's always been a little different, when it comes to Pen." She took a sip of tea, regaining her composure, and she looked up at the man with a more probing gaze. "Agent Noirbarret, I'd appreciate it if you told my why, exactly, youare looking for Pen."

The man scratched at his temple, clucking his tongue:

"Ah, well, ma'am. To be honest, there was something of an 'incident' at Memorial Stadium the other day—"

"Something involving Penrith?" Her voice quivered with alarm.

"No. Not in the slightest." He said. "The, uh, incident didn't involve your boy. No, little Penrith was just a witness. _Maybe_. That's why I need to talk to him, really—"

"C— could his disappearance have anything to do with—"

Noirbarret raised one of his hands, shaking his head slowly:

"No, ma'am. Of that I'm certain." He toyed with his teacup, again looking at the fireplace ashes in the next room. "No, you see, it's possible that he may have bought some counterfeit merchandise at the park. _Inadvertently_, I'm sure..."

Martha blinked, shaking her head back and forth:

"C— counterfeit? The FBI gets involved when some huckster sells knock-off merchandise? _Really_, agent!"

Noirbarret clasped his hands on the tabletop:

"It isa multimillion dollar industry, ma'am. And that's just in the greater Baltimore area, alone..."

Martha scoffed, taking a long sip from her tea.

"Yes. Well, forgive me, Agent, for being a little more concerned over the whereabouts of my boy."

"Of course, ma'am." He cooed. "Though you'll forgive me: he was never really _your _boy to begin with, was he?"

Martha looked up at him. She caught a lump in her throat, and looked back down, nodding sullenly.

"Come to think of it," she said, "I do think Pen was wearing a brand-new Cal Ripken jersey; he's Pen's favorite player. I didn't ask him about it at the time. I mean, Pen always has a little money of his own. But I know he'd never _knowingly _buy something that wasn't genuine..."

Noirbarret flipped open a small notepad and went to scratching a few lines down. He nodded wearily as the woman spoke. When she was done he tapped the page, clucking his tongue.

"Now, about his name. It is _Penrith_, right?"

Martha nodded.

"That's a rather unusual handle, isn't it? If I may say..."

"It's, oh, I think it's English. Pen was never very upfront with his family history. I don't know what happened to his parents and the rest of his family, but it was something tragic, I'm certain. He'd _never _discuss any of it, the poor dear. And the Baltimore CPS files on him weren't very complete when they assigned him to me. Um, but you see he has this accent. It's a funny little thing; _very_ cute, but very hard to place. He told me he was Welsh, which might make sense. And there's a 'Penrith' in England, you see. It's a very small town. I assumed that his parents just named him after that town. But then one day I found out that there's _another _Penrith, down in Australia. I got to thinking that maybe he was named after _that _one."

"Why's that, ma'am?"

Martha shook her head, sighing.

"I don't know. A feeling, I suppose. Pen's accent is a beauty, but it's a very strange thing, too. It's the kind of accent I've only seen on old friends who traveled all around the world with their parents in their youth."

"Mmm. Kind of a 'bastardization' of dialects, then?"

Martha's eyes locked on the man. She scoffed.

"Perhaps that isn't the word I'd use, Agent." She looked down into her tea, smiling again. "But he lets the strangest things slip into that accent, whenever he gets really excited. Almost like a... a certain kind of..."

"..._brogue_." Noirbarret muttered.

Martha looked up, surprised.

"How did you know?"

The man smiled gently, slowly rising out of his chair:

"Oh, just a lucky guess. A kid spends any time around the British Isles and then he comes back across the pond, well, he's sure to have picked up a bit of Scot when all's said and done. It's an infectious thing, really. Kinda like syphilis."

Martha again stared at the man, a disapproving scowl on her face.

"That's... uh, not to say that he... uh, has syphilis, of course." Noirbarret cleared his throat. "Tell me, ma'am: what's his medical history, briefly? Just so I can know if there's any issues we need to watch out for in our search."

The woman shrugged:

"Oh, not much of a history at all, really. No, uh, allergies, or anything. No problematic doctor visits. Pen's rather lucky that way."

"How so?"

"Well, he's quite the resilient boy. Two months ago we had to update his vaccinations for school. It turned out that Pen's physician got a bad batch of MMR vaccine and most of the kids who got it came down sick for days afterward. Pen was perfectly fine; not even a sniffle. Then there was that time he went up to clear our gutters and he took a tumble off the side of the house! I was certain he'd broken a rib, and maybe punctured a lung, even. But once I'd called the ambulance and checked him again he was fine. The ER cleared him to go home that night! Like I said: Pen is quite the lucky boy."

Noirbarret played with his stubby pencil, staring down at his notepad:

"And _resilient_ too, hmm?" He looked up at Martha. "Ma'am, could I possibly see Pen's bedroom?"

The woman escorted Noirbarret upstairs, where the agent surveyed the bedroom. He drummed his fingers along a small desk beside the bed. There was a school notebook, paper, and pencils strewn about it, but nothing else. He rooted through the boy's dresser, finding nothing but ordinary children's clothes. Looking back at the bed Noirbarret ran his hand along the underside of the mattress all along each side of the bed. When Martha gave him a quizzical look he smiled:

"You, uh, might be surprised at the things a young boy could hide under his bed..."

"I've been a foster parent for a _very _long time, Agent Noirbarret, and no: I would not be surprised in the slightest."

"Well, I was hoping for something. Anything. A clue to where he might've decided to go..."

The man looked around the room, shaking his head.

"There's not much here at all, is there?"

Martha stared at the floor, nodding.

"Well, Pen doesn't really have much on this earth to call his own. In fact he left most of the things he _does _have. When I woke up and saw his Walkman on the table I hoped that he wouldn't be gone long. He treasured that toy so very much. He's...you know, just so _grateful_..."

Martha put a hand to her mouth, shaking her head. She walked off a ways, and as she did so Noirbarret's eyes were drawn to the window behind her. He approached the shelf and stared at a small tchotchke resting just against the window's glass, shining in the afternoon sunlight. It was a bell, and it was a very recognizable one.

"The Liberty Bell?" He muttered. "Any reason why he'd have this?"

Martha smiled:

"Oh, that. It was from a little contest at his school. Pen's history class was learning about the Liberty Bell, and their teacher gave them a creative writing assignment. They had to come up with a little story about how the bell got its crack— anything they could think of, really. Pen wrote a story about a group of boys who convinced the bell-ringer to let them try ringing it, and he did, because he was drunk." She smiled. "In his story, the bell was so heavy that when the boys started ringing it it kept launching them into the air— one side of the rope, and then the other— and they got so carried away with it that they rang it too hard and it cracked."

"Kinda mundane," Noirbarret turned the bell over in his hand. "Guess his teacher liked it, though..."

"Mmm. She said that it, uh, just captured all the senses, the way he told it. She said it was so vivid— with the feelings, the sights, the smells, and all that— and he was so exact with the dates. _Believable_, too. It was almost like he'd copied the whole thing from someone's first-person narrative."

"Now that _is _interesting, isn't it? 12-year-old boys aren't exactly known for writing the most believable fiction, are they? Or consuming it..."

Noirbarret set the bell down. He motioned all around the room, drawing a short breath:

"Uh, ma'am, it's not my business, of course, but when I look around this room, and the rest of the house, too, I'm not really seeing any pictures of the boy. Now, I can understand if you don't like putting up your foster children's photographs— don't wanna get too attached, or anything, but it seems that you've got a big montage of all your former charges over the fireplace, downstairs. So..."

Martha licked her lips; she shook her head:

"Uh, no, Agent. It isn't like that, at all. It's, well... Pen has an, uh, 'aversion' to cameras."

"Do tell?"

"He, well, gets in these moods whenever anyone breaks out a camera. It's like a very deep kind of melancholy. He just really doesn't like to have his picture taken. When I asked him why, once, he told me something about how things 'don't last', and he doesn't like the idea of leaving pictures behind, when the moment's gone."

Noirbarret chuckled, wagging his head:

"Your kid sounds a little like a nihilist, doesn't he? Guess that's alsosomething 12-year-old boys aren't exactly known for..."

"Penrith is a very special boy," Martha said.

"I don't deny it."

The woman held up a finger, drawing a slow breath. She walked out of the boy's room and down the hall, into her room. When she returned a moment later she was carrying a small framed photograph, and she held it up to the man.

"This is the Maryland Zoo," she whispered. "It was a long day, that day. I helped chaperone their school field trip. Someone gave me a camera to record the trip. I snapped photos of all the students. But every time I caught Penrith in the lens— with his friends, or out on his lonesome— he'd always catch sight of me first, and then he'd look at me with those big, sad little eyes; I couldn't bear to snap a shot.

"He watches his surroundings a lot. I don't know why, but he's always very vigilant. It's funny: he likes to carry around this little vintage fox head, like from an old lady's fur coat. He says it's just some kind of fashion accessory, but I've heard him talking to it before, like it's an imaginary friend. 'Friend' might not be the right word, the way he talks to it, but I like to tease him sometimes. The way I see it, _he's _more like a fox, the way he's so skittish around everyone. No, he doesn't relax, often, but I really appreciate it when he does, because I know that _he's _enjoying himself. Well, anyway, there was a moment— just a small window— when we visited the black-footed penguin exhibit. I don't know if Pen had ever seen a penguin in person, before. But they call those penguins 'jackasses', you know, because of the way they brae. Penrith was laughing even before we made it into the exhibit; that word is funny enough, to a child, but when we actually saw the colony— they were cavorting all around, playing in the surf right beside the viewing bars, and going on with their funny barking— Pen was transfixed. It was only a moment, and it was a moment that never comes around too often..."

She handed the framed picture to Noirbarret, who took it up and examined it: it was a very blurry shot, as if taken in a hurry, and it showed a mess of little bodies pressed up against a set of bars that were rusted by their exposure to saltwater. The only point of focus was a small spot in the middle, and in that small spot a boy's face looked on past the bars. He was laughing. His hair was a black bed of ungainly spindles, except around the front of his ears, where a few telltale strands of gray marred his skin. His eyes were blue, but not pure; there was something else in them, like a coat of rust covering the color, and they were quite expressive. The boy's nose had been broken sometime in the past and it was never reset.

Noirbarret looked up from the picture and noticed Martha holding a hand against her mouth; he could tell that her lips were trembling.

"Can I ask you a question, ma'am?"

Martha snapped out of her reverie and nodded at the man. Noirbarret held up the picture, wagging it about in the air:

"This boy is special to _you_, isn't he?"

Martha slowly nodded.

"Yes," she mumbled. "He is."

He slowly walked up to her, and as he walked he noticed the necklace around her neck. It was on a braided chain of sterling silver, but the honey-colored bauble at its center was as cheap as chalk.

"If you don't mind me asking: that looks like paste, doesn't it?"

Martha swallowed:

"Yes," she muttered.

"That doesn't seem to be the kind of thing to come from your fine jewelry drawer..."

"No..." she fingered the little 'jewel' at the center of the necklace. "No, this was from Penrith. It was my birthday. Imagine, you know: he remembers _my _birthday? Honestly..."

Noirbarret stopped right in front of the woman:

"This boy," he mumbled. "This boy seems to care for _you _a great deal, doesn't he?"

Martha closed her eyes, sighing:

"With Penrith it's always the little things. He's so very considerate, and so understanding. But you can tell that he's so very sad, too, I think. I... I'm always trying so hard to get past all those defenses he puts up. He's very good at that, and—"

Martha paused, mid-sentence, and her wrinkled eyes widened into saucers.

The woman sputtered, her body convulsing in Noirbarret's arms. The man held one hand on her shoulder, and with the other he still gripped his dagger tight, even as he twisted it in her chest.

Martha opened her mouth, moaning in terror. A few stray trickles of frothy blood escaped the corners of her lips.

"Shhhh… shhhh…" Noirbarret cooed.

The woman's lips trembled as she watched Noirbarret— with some otherworldly grin on his steely lips— gently drag her over to the bed and lay on her back.

"Shhhhhhh…" He again cooed, leaning down near the woman's ear. "I am sorry, my dear," he whispered, "and it's nothing personal— not that that's any consolation. But, you see, I think that you're rather dear to this boy, and if that's the case..."

Noirbarret pulled the dagger from her chest, causing Martha to scream, briefly, as she helplessly tried to cover the wound. He cries devolved into raspy moans before long, and after a few seconds she was perfectly still.

"...if that's the case, then you cannot stay in this world."

He examined that cheap paste necklace around the woman's neck, and then violently snapped it off. He twirled the honey-colored bauble around his finger, smirking, and then he looked down at that photograph. He stroked at the hair of that boy in the photograph.

"How did he like his feathered bed, and how did he like his sheets?"

Noirbarret looked down at Martha's corpse. He sneered:

"How did he like his lady, gay, who lay in _my_ arms, asleep?"

The man took a few slow breaths, and then he slammed the picture frame on the floor. He retrieved the picture from its remains. He looked at that tacky Liberty Bell decoration on the window, and then he smiled. When he looked down at the photograph again he curled his lips into a vicious snarl:

"I'm coming for you, Penance," he growled. "It's that time again, old 'friend'. I'm ready to take away _everything _that you care about, once again..."

Noirbarret shook his head as he walked out of the bedroom, chuckling to himself. Really: the fox was supposed to make things as sporting as possible, wasn't he? This fox wasn't even trying. The man collected his umbrella at the kitchen door, and then he sauntered out into the sunlight, singing a jaunty little tune as he went.

He was singing 'Philadelphia Freedom'.


	6. Living Easy Without Family Ties

_Author's Note_: Penance's critical opinion notwithstanding, this chapter does _**not **_imply thatI believe 'Conan the Destroyer' is in any way superior to 'Conan the Barbarian'. The latter is a classic sword-and-sandal revenge story (with James Earl Jones as the bad guy!). The former is a dumbed-down slapstick mess written only to please squabbling kiddies.

Penance only prefers 'Destroyer' because he's (mentally) 12 years old, and thus his taste in movies is objectively terrible. Kids kinda suck, that way…

…Well, at least his taste in music isn't quite as bad...

.

.

.

"Living Easy Without Family Ties"

**Philadelphia – 1984**

The blast of the orchestra brought him to his feet. Penance spun about, reeling in the darkness. His pulse dropped off when he looked up at the screen, blinking sleepily: it was just the movie's opening credits. He wagged his head and brushed a few stray crusts of sleep out of his eyes. His little freak-out made some of the other movie patrons turn around, looking back at him with quizzical frowns. He quickly slumped back down into his seat. He was nestled in the back row, hiding in the far corner of the theater.

It was already the next show time. Penance had fallen asleep during the end credits, and those wage-slave teens manning the cleaning crew must've missed him. They probably overlooked the boy in their single-minded zeal to get the whole theater as clean as possible.

Penance smirked. Given that the soles of his shoes were about to peel apart on that horrible, sticky floor at any given step, that explanation was about as plausible as his constant excuses for why he never seemed to grow out of his clothing. They were never any good, really; the best he could ever do was say that some doctor in his past had diagnosed him with "something called a 'glandular disorder'." That explanation tended to work out just fine, until he actually _saw _any doctors, who without fail never found any problems in any of Penance's glands. And, unfortunately for the boy, medical care around the world just seemed to keep getting better and better. He could remember a time when kids never even got to seea doctor unless they were dying, or in horrible and blinding agony. In fact, it usually had to be _both_.

Ah, those were the good 'ol days...

He scratched at his head, still waking up, and he looked over at Galabeg; the macabre fox's head held a silent vigil atop the boy's backpack.

"What're _you _looking at?" Penance grumbled under his breath.

Despite the rude awakening Penance left the theater in high spirits. The movie was _great_. It was much better than that previous film, 'Conan the Barbarian'. Now, that movie wasn't _too_ bad— it had good special effects, and the story was okay— but it was all so darn _serious_ all the time. This one— 'Conan the Destroyer'— was a _lot_ more fun to watch, and it had some seriously great scenes. There was that part where Schwarzenegger tried to make friends with a camel, and it spit up on him, so Arnold knocked it right on the head with his fist and the big animal just fell straight down to the ground. It was hilarious! Penance couldn't stop laughing at it, and he was giggling long after the scene ended.

Of course, the best part of _this _movie was that it actually had a straight-up adventure story: rescue the princess, defeat the evil queen, all that junk. It was perfect, really. Conan had his little ensemble of quirky characters, there were some wickedly dangerous wizards, and then a big ol' demonic monster to fight at the end. Come on, that's all you really need in a story! In that first movie everyone acted so _serious_ every step of the way: Conan had to spend this huge amount of time recovering from being crucified on a tree (which was kinda gross, too), he took _forever _mourning his dead girlfriend, and he spent a bunch of time all bug-eyed, staring at the camera, trying to pray to some ridiculous ancient god. Even when he cut off James Earl Jones' head at the end of the movie, and it rolled down these giant stone stairs, everyone was just standing around him like: 'okay, what now?' It was so darn _somber_! When Penance first saw that movie he hoped someone would trip on their shoelaces and tumble down those stairs, maybe; _anything _to lighten the mood!

Seriously, nobody likes a story where the main character just aimlessly wanders around all the time being angsty; it gets old really fast.

With the theater behind him Penance took to wandering down a nearby alley, head bowed in angsty contemplation. He was completely out of money now; that theater ticket took a real bite out of his remaining wallet, and he spent all the rest of his cash on a box of Good & Plenty.

The boy's head rose; he looked at his backpack, glaring at Galabeg's lifeless marble eyes.

"'Cause I _wanted _them," he growled. "What? I can have a treat, can't I?"

The fox's head bobbed about aimlessly as the boy walked.

"No," Penance said. "The money _wouldn't_ do me much good, anyway. What am I gonna spend it on? And it _was _useful. It helped put me in a good mood. _You're _the one who's souring it!"

He shook his head as he walked, staring at the broken asphalt beneath his feet.

"No, Galabeg: I'm _not _being careless! I'm not a _robot _either. I like to be in a good mood. That _helps _me be more alert. When I dothings that put me in a good mood it can helpme make good decisions and survive. You wouldn't know about that, being a dead chunk of some stupid fox's head. Seriously: as I recall: _you_ took an arrow in the neck, Galabeg: why do I even take _any _advice from you, again?"

The boy skidded to a halt. He put his lip in his teeth and looked back at the fox's head, blinking uncomfortably:

"Uh... look, I'm sorry..."

Suddenly the boy blinked; he wagged his head and quickly nodded, cursing under his breath:

"Ah, that's right," he mumbled.

The boy rooted through his backpack, digging deep into the bottom of it, and he finally found what he was looking for: he pulled out a worn leather dog collar. It was studded with very small spikes all around the edges, and for all purposes it looked like a very ordinary collar. Only a few places along its rim, where the leather was completely worn away, betrayed the thing's secret: its insides were not all treated leather, but it was instead a thick metal band, at least a centimeter deep. Penance wordlessly wrapped the thing around his neck and tightened it snug against his throat; he could smell the rot of fading leather rising off the thing, as well as the harsh sting of mothballs. The boy looked back at Galabeg:

"I'm not being _careless_," he repeated. "I'm just a little forgetful. It's... it's been awhile, you know? Since we've been on the road, I mean..."

He looked forward, shaking his head:

"Let's just...let's get our bearings and find someplace to go, huh?"

"You already _are _'someplace'. You're in the _wrong place_, kid."

Penance's muscles tensed. He examined his surroundings: the narrow alley had opened to a small courtyard. The buildings all around him towered many stories in the sky, but everything was tarnished with blight. Boards graced most windows, and glass dotted the ground. Graffiti graced the brick walls, and the building entryways were either shut tight and chained or busted open, exposing vacant caverns of absolute blackness beyond.

The voice that challenged the boy came from one of these dark maws, and soon the speaker strutted into view: it was a teenage boy, about 16 years old. He was black, very tall, with a small scar on one cheek. He glared at Penance with a pair of sea-foam eyes, and they were narrowed to vicious little slits.

"You're a _long_ way from home, li'l honky."

Penance spun about: another body emerged from another decrepit hole in the wall. This speaker looked younger than his friend— maybe 14 or 15— but he was all muscle from his calves to his shoulders, and a far stockier build.

Penance examined the two older boys, drawing a cautious semi-circle to put as much distance between them as possible:

"What do you want?" He asked.

The taller boy cracked his knuckles, and that harsh sound echoed in the alley:

"Let's start with all your cash, punk. Then we'll see if you got more'n just textbooks and highlighters in that backpack."

Penance answered this with two words; they were not particularly diplomatic.

Penance took a few steps back before bumping into a body behind him; he spun about and discovered a third person: this one was a girl, also black, and perhaps 16 years old, with deep brown eyes and jet black hair done up in tight cornrows against her skull. Behind her head, however, she bore a surprisingly thick ponytail set in what appeared to be a luxurious French braid. Freckles dotted the milk chocolate skin beneath her wide eyes. She was tall for her age, and very thin, with something of a gymnast's build to her body. The state of her ratty clothes revealed the tough way she lived, however.

Excellent hair care notwithstanding...

The girl looked down at Penance's Orioles team shirt; she flashed him a very unsavory grin:

"Baltimore?" She scoffed. "What're you wearing that trash around here, for? Don't you know this is Phillies country, kid? Now, not only are you in the wrong part of town, you're not even wearing the right team jersey!"

Before Penance could react he felt the two boys gripping his arms, pulling him down against the ground. The girl got to one knee, at eye-level with him:

"Cute collar, though. Heh! You're kinda like a li'l dog that's gotten very, _very _lost!"

The older boy looked up at the ponytailed girl:

"Whaddya think we should do with 'im, Whip?" He asked.

The girl smiled, narrowing her eyes:

"I don't give a shit about baseball, really, but I still think the little schoolboy here needs to learn not to go steppin' where he doesn't belong," she said. "Hold 'im down..."

The boys held Penance against the ground as the girl— 'Whip'— dug through the pockets of his shorts. Penance wasn't having any of it:

"Don't touch me! Lemme go!" He struggled from side to side, trying to kick the girl with his legs, but this only seemed to amuse her.

"You should relax, schoolboy," she said. "Some people would pay good money for this..."

One of Penance's legs found the girl's chin; this sent her reeling backward, and half a second later he felt one of the boy's fists slamming against his head. It made him see neon lights for just a brief moment; under other circumstances it might've been rather pleasant.

The boy was about to give Penance another knuckle to the skull when the girl got to her feet and barked at him:

"Forget it!" She growled. "No money in there, anyway." She looked at Penance's backpack and motioned to the boys: "Gimme his backpack," she demanded.

Again Penance struggled as the boys removed his backpack, but this time it was the girl who wouldn't have any of it; she promptly lodged one sneaker in his crotch, as hard as she could kick.

At least Penance _hoped _that was as hard as she could kick.

They rather easily got his backpack off as Penance writhed on the ground, hands between his legs.

"Bet that'll teach you to stick to the schoolyard, li'l punk!" The stockier boy grinned.

Sirens suddenly sounded along the street beyond the courtyard; all three of the thieving kids' heads alerted to the sound, like a herd of deer spooked by a hunter's footsteps. Cop cars were closing in somewhere nearby, almost certainly unrelated to this little shakedown, but they weren't going to push their luck.

"Gimme!" Whip called to one of the boys, who threw Penance's backpack into her hands. The boys quickly disappeared into the ruins of the blighted building, while the girl stood over Penance's writhing body.

"Can you walk?" She growled.

Penance looked up at her, teeth on edge. He nodded.

"Then walk the hell outta here, schoolboy. Don't you ever come back here. Or anywhere else that even _looks _like 'here'. You got that?"

He didn't answer her; instead he focused on grinding his teeth.

Whip raced off, darting into the alley from where Penance had come. For a few seconds the boy just lay there in a tight ball, stewing in pain and rage. But then his eyes widened, and he drew a sharp breath:

"_Galabeg_!"

He was on his feet and chasing after the girl in an instant.

At first Whip looked back at the pursing boy with a mildly amused smirk, but as Penance's feet pounded pavement, and he actually began to gain on her, the girl's amusement turned to frustration. She raced up a rusty fire escape, climbing the floors as quickly as she could. Penance couldn't manage this quite as fast as she could, but he kept up nonetheless. The building was five stories tall. By then the girl's lead was good enough that, once she got to the roof, she had enough time to run all the way to one side, build up speed running back the way she came, and leap right off the edge. The adjacent building was slightly lower to the ground, and while the gap was sizeable, she managed it by the skin of her sneakers.

Whip tumbled along the adjacent rooftop, and she came to rest against the rooftop door. By the time she got to her feet she could see Penance standing atop the other building, staring at her with dagger eyes.

"No hard feelings, kid," she shouted, waving the boy's backpack in the air while grinning.

She turned to open the door, but then she caught sight of the boy out of the corner of one eye: he was slowly walking backward, still facing the large gap between buildings.

"Hey!" She barked. "What're you doing, kid?"

Penance continued walking backward.

"Hey, kid! You can't make that!" She yelled. "It's too far for you! What're you, _insane_?"

Penance ignored her, still walking backward.

"It isn't worth it, kid! Go home! Jesus, it's just a backpack! It's not worth dying—"

He took off running.

"_No_!" Whip shouted.

Penance leapt quite gracefully off the edge of the roof, and he soared majestically through the air. It must've been quite a sight. Until, that is, he came up short, slammed headfirst into the other building's fire escape and then flopped through the air like a rag doll, heading straight down. He landed face-first on the asphalt below.

"Oh, my god!" Whip screamed from the rooftop. "Oh, god! _God_!"

The rooftop door opened with a loud squeal. He could hear the girl's panicked footfalls through busted windows as she raced down the deserted building's stairwell. It wasn't half-a-minute later that she burst through the street-level door, looking for the spot he fell.

He wasn't there, of course.

As Whip stood there, knees knocking together like bowls of Jell-O, Penance came up beside her and forcefully ripped the backpack from her shaking hands. This made her jump, and she bumped up against a nearby dumpster. Her breaths came in ragged gasps.

Penance glared at the girl with iron eyes. The remains of a wicked nosebleed graced his upper lip, and a small trickle of blood still flowed along the edge of his mouth. The boy wiped the latter clean in one deliberate motion with the back of his hand.

"You can't have the whole backpack," he snarled. Slowly, the boy unzipped the outer compartment, freeing that macabre fox's head from its place. Penance wedged Galabeg into the front collar of his shirt, where the thing's black eyes could just barely peek out over the fabric. When he was done he held up the tartan backpack:

"_Now _do you want it? It's got all kinds of _really _cool things in it: three pairs of white socks, I think, and four pairs of underwear. Bet you'd look _great _in 'em!" He snarled.

Whip still breathed hard; her brown eyes trembled as she struggled to process the scene before her.

"Don't want it?" Penance said. "Then _fine_. Now leave me alone..."

Penance quickly shouldered his backpack and stalked off. He expected the girl to follow him, and he wasn't disappointed:

"Wh— what _was _that? How— how're you still—"

"I didn't fall all the way," the boy didn't bother turning around. "I was grabbing at the fire escape railings as I went down. So I didn't end up hurt. No thanks to _you_—"

"I _saw _you—"

"What, you think you saw me fall the whole way down, or something? Guess that means you're feeling guilty, huh? Got a conscience, _thief_? I could've_ died_, chasing you. For all you know, at least. Well, I hope you feel extra rotten for that. _Extra_!"

Whip stopped walking; she called out to the boy:

"Well: at least tell me why you have all those clothes in your backpack, kid."

"'Cause I don't havea home to go home _to_, that's why."

Whip almost let the boy out of earshot; finally she called out to him:

"Look: I'm sorry we jumped you. We, uh, _I _assumed that you're just some spoiled little brat, come to the wrong side of the tracks..."

Penance stopped walking; he shook his head, snarling:

"Apologize to my _balls_!"

"Then turn around and drop your shorts."

The boy's head jerked a bit, _very_ involuntarily. When he looked back at the girl he could feel the blood flushing over his cheeks.

Whip laughed, crossing her arms and shaking her head:

"Look, kid, don't be in such a rush to run off. You gotta make sure you're not hurt from that fall—"

"I'm _not_—"

"And when was the last time you had anything to eat?"

"None of your business—"

"Well, look: I've got some stuff at my place, if you want—"

"You _are _feelin' guilty," Penance scoffed.

"Hey: you aren't getting anything _else_ anytime soon, are you? With no cash on you, an' all..."

"I'll make do," he growled. "I'm tougher than I look."

"Not sayin' you're _not_. But..."

He rolled his eyes, and again he faced away from the girl. This was a fine, bloody little mess: he makes it into a new city, and immediately the whole thing's a write-off, right away, because somebody spots his little 'talent' firsthand. It was what Penance called a 'sour patch': where his attempt to blend into a locale was doomed to failure before it even began. It wasn't the first time he'd suffered this, and in this case it was almost entirely irrelevant; he was never going to linger in Philadelphia too long, but he'd hoped that he'd get at least a year or two of a 'breather' here, living as a vagabond street urchin, until he could put together some kind of 'long term' plan.

He wasn't looking for another family— foster or otherwise— for anytime in the immediately future. The pain of leaving Martha was still too raw, and it'd be raw for a long time, too. If history was any indicator (and it was) then Penance would likely stay on his own for at least a decade, or even two. Of course it wasn't just the hurt of his old relationships, or the agony of beginning a whole set of _new_ ones— knowing from the start they're doomed to that vicious three to four year lifespan— but there was also a more selfish reason hidden behind it all:

He absolutely couldn't stand another round of elementary and middle-schooling. Again: not for another decade, at least. It was always the price he had to pay if he wanted to live his life with any semblance of normalcy. And it was always worth it.

But still: he had his limits. Right now he didn't need _anyone_. It was him and Galabeg, and that was a scenario he was quite used to. Of course he was; it was just the way he rolled. It was certainly the _easiest _way to live, and in a way that made it the _best_, as well.

Yup. It absolutely was. Really.

He didn't need _anyone _else, right now. Not at all.

The first thing he had to do was worry about how to get the hell out of Philadelphia. Penance shook his head, looking back at the girl her:

"Anyway, I'm not interested in your charity, so..."

His voice slowed; the boy looked down at one of the pockets on Whip's faded blue jeans. A crumpled pack of cigarettes peeked out from the denim.

"Uh: what're those?" He mumbled, motioning with one hand.

Whip looked down at her pocked:

"Oh, yeah: I don't actually smoke. Found these in a storm drain, half filled. I plan on tradin' 'em for—"

"What's the brand?"

"Camels. Why—"

"Gimme one," Penance mumbled.

Whip squinted at the boy:

"Uh, look: you're just—"

Penance held up a finger:

"You say that I'm just a kid? I walk. If you say that smoking is bad for me? I walk. If you _don't_ give just _one cigarette_? I walk."

The girl stared at him for quite some time. Finally she sighed and reached into the carton, removing one cigarette. When Penance came up to her and took it she shrugged, showing him her bare hands:

"You can have the cigarette, but I don't have a lighter. So—"

The boy pulled a lighter out of his backpack and started it with one flick. Whip shook her head as Penance lit his cigarette:

"I'm going to hell, aren't I?" She mumbled.

"Dunno," the boy muttered, shuttling smoke through his nose. "I'm starting to think you might be kinda nice."

"Anyway, c'mere." Whip motioned with her head, leading the boy down a bank of serpentine alleys.

Penance followed her at a distance, eminently enjoying the cigarette between his lips. When he looked down at his neckline he was met by Galabeg's dead eyes; the thing still peeked out of the front of his shirt.

"_Shut up_," Penance mumbled, again blowing a mess of smoke through his nose. "I can have a treat, can't I?" He looked back up at the girl ahead of him, who was waiting at a dark crossroad in the serpentine alleyway. "Besides: it's not like there's any rule about kids taking cigarettes from strangers, is there?"

There was not, Penance knew. He'd learned as much from all those school presentations he'd suffered through across the years. Turns out it was only _candy_ you had to really watch out for. And Penance would never even think of taking _candy _from a stranger.

Unless it was a Good & Plenty. Maybe.


	7. Heart of Savagery

_Author's Note:_ Someone did the math and got on to me about the fact that it's unlikely Penance would've spent so many years wandering around after his 'first death' without making any contact with another Immortal, what with the Highlander 'buzz' and all. The short answer is that there are different rules for child Immortals in _this_ story, and I'll get to them in the next chapter. Long story short: kids like Penance get a little bit of an edge in the Game. The Source isn't so terribly unfair, it seems…

.

.

"The Heart of Savagery"

** Letterewe, Scotland – 1650**

Morning rays streaked through gaps in the thatch wall. His body stirred on the leather mat, and he tried to bring up one arm to shield his eyes. That arm, however, refused his request to move.

He opened his eyes and sat up, grabbing his left arm with his right hand. He ran that hand along his arm. The arm was wrapped in cloth, and a wooden dowel was bound across its length, preventing him from moving it. Penance squinted at this curious arrangement, and in his sleepy daze he spent a good minute just trying to make sense of it.

Suddenly a small girl toddled into his tiny room; she was about eight years old— freckle-faced and raven-haired— and she carried a ridiculously oversized basin of water between her slender hands. The girl managed to set the thing on a wooden tabletop with great difficulty, but when she was done she turned to the boy and gave him a polite, sunny smile, flashing an adorable little gap between her front teeth. Her eyes were massive green things, and they shone like brilliant emeralds. When she spoke her words came out in the most extreme accent possible; it was positively drenched in a Celtic brogue so thick that Penance was surprised she wasn't accompanied by bagpipers at all times, ready to belt out a tune whenever she parted her lips.

"They didn't take you!"

Penance squinted at the girl.

"Uh, who didn't?" He asked.

"The faeries in the deep woods, naturally!" She replied. "They're known to snatch a weakened spirit, says my mother, at least. I'm happy they didn't take yours!"

The girl tittered, grinning ear-to-ear. This was all a little much for Penance to process this soon after waking up. It'd be a lot to process wide-awake, too, he thought.

"Um, who are you?" The boy asked.

"I'm Struana!" The girl happily thumped her chest.

Penance cocked his brow; he waited for the girl to elaborate, but she didn't.

"Hi, Struana," he mumbled.

"Hi! What's your name?"

"Penance."

Struana furrowed her tiny brow and pressed one reed-like finger to her lips:

"'Penance'? That's an odd name, isn't it?"

"No, it's not. '_Struana'_ is an odd name..."

The girl wagged her head back and forth:

"Not in the Highlands, it isn't—"

"It is. And so's believing in 'faeries'—"

"Not in the Highlands."

Penance stared at the girl for a moment, and then finally Struana remembered the basin of water. She gestured to it:

"If you wish to wash," she explained. "Mother says you were awfully smelly, but that you likely wouldn't appreciate being bathed while asleep. She did clean your arm, though. How'd you break it, anyway?"

He blinked.

"Uh... break?"

Before he could make any sense of this the girl started, hands to her face. Her green eyes widened:

"Oh! I forgot to collect the firewood, didn't I? Bother!"

She darted from the tiny room, but then peeked her head back in:

"You're an odd boy, Penance," she smirked. "But I'm still glad the faeries didn't take you. So's mother and Uallas, too!"

After the girl disappeared a pallor crept over Penance's face. He remembered that gray-haired curmudgeon: his reason for coming to this god-forsaken corner of Scotland in the first place. What an idiot he'd been: lured into a spider's web with such honey promises! Honestly, Penance acted just as reasonably as if the man had dangled a piece of sweet-smelling candy behind the boy and led him by the nose! Now Penance didn't know what that prick intended to do with him, but he wasn't sticking around to find out.

He got to his feet and found his shirt bundled up beside the leather mat. When he picked it up he was surprised to discover it had been laundered, and as he pulled it on he noticed a faint scent of lilac coming off it, instead of the mounds of crusty sweat that once coated the insides.

He should be grateful, but somehow his clothing didn't quite feel 'right' on his body without a healthy coating of his own stink on them. He couldn't really explain it. His clothes just kind of felt more a 'part' of him, that way.

Beside his clothing he found the one personal effect he kept on his body: a grimy set of rosary beads. They were a fine thing in their time, each bead a glittering chunk of oiled mahogany wood, but all the years on the road were unkind to them, and they were in a state of pronounced disrepair.

As he approached the basin of water he looked down on the far edge of the table: a small knife rested there, very shabby and with worn edges. Penance looked to the door, and seeing no one there he quickly grabbed the rusty weapon. He curled it up in one hand, the blade hidden against his wrist.

Penance crept to the edge of the room and poked his head out: a small hallway ran down the center of the house, framed not in thatching but in heavy oak wood, and small rooms branched off that corridor. He crept a few feet out of his room, but only made it that far before a stern hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him about:

"What're you doin' on your feet, then? Damaging that splint, no doubt! Careless fool of a boy!"

The woman before him was in her late twenties, and in her green eyes he saw nothing but that little girl— Struana. The woman's face was similarly-formed, with a certain lanky wispiness that didn't exactly give off a sense of frailty, but rather delicacy. Her face lacked the freckles, of course, and her hair was done up in a sensible bun, in contrast to the little girl's wildly-flowing locks. The woman looked him up and down, grunting loudly:

"Well, you seem fit enough to stand, I suppose. But little else, I'd wager." She wagged her finger in his face. "Don't you be breaking that splint, child: you'll not be getting another, you hear?"

Penance could only nod, dumbfounded. He stood with his free hand behind his back, doing his best to hide the blade in his hand. He stammered a bit, and then finally got his words out:

"Y— you're Struana's mother?"

The woman again grunted. She backed away from the boy, smoothing out the lines of her plain cloth dress.

"Aye. That I am. Cadha is my name, lad. You'll be thanking me for that splint now, I assume?"

Again he blinked dumbly. Eventually he nodded:

"Uh— y— yes. Thank you very much, ma'am. I, uh—"

"You'll be thanking Uallas next, I'd wager." Cadha motioned down the hallway with her head. "The man's actions rise above and beyond the requirements of Christian duty, they do. I don't need that man getting himself hurt fighting brigands and bandits, mind you. But when he saw you so beset the man's heart overrode his head. Still, to come to a small lad's aid against such ruffians is a noble thing, in my estimate, and I am not displeased to see you doing so well this morning. All thanks to our Uallas, of course."

Penance grit his teeth, trying to hide his snarl:

"Yeah," the boy muttered. "He's just great, isn't he?"

Penance was directed down the hall, and he found Uallas sitting in a chair beside a table in the residence's great room. The man ate chunks of bread off a plate while absently stirring the flames of a smoldering hearth set into the wall. He didn't turn around to face the boy.

"Pull up a chair, will you, child?"

Penance did not. Instead he stood rather awkwardly behind the man, glaring at the back of his head.

"Or would you rather dig that knife you're carrying into the small of my back?" Uallas chuckled. "That might hurt, you know. I'd be rather cross with you—"

"Cross with _me_?" Penance said. "You snapped my neck in two! How could you—"

Uallas began to chuckle uncontrollably.

"How could I? Well, it was rather easy," he said. "There's barely more to the bones in your neck than there is in a baby bird's."

"And did you break my arm, too?"

Uallas faced the boy:

"Yes," he nodded. "Right before I presented you to dear Cadha. And, oh, how she fussed over you. She spent so long fastening up that splint over your arm that she neglected to notice the wound had already healed up by the time she was done. Why, she even broke her own cardinal rule of the household, if you can believe it: that no unwashed male may enter, period. _I'm _even required to rinse myself in the stream before coming home for dinner. Then again, forge work doesn't exactly make a man smell _rosy_, I suppose. That Cadha, though! Woman's got the nose of a pedigree bloodhound..."

"_Why _did you do all that, bastard?"

Uallas leaned back in his chair, taking a large bite of bread:

"I figure that if I'm going to be schooling you in the ways of... well, _our _ways, that I best have some security you won't go running off. Dear Cadha may seem gruff, child, but she's got the heart of an angel beating beneath her breast. Add to that the stubbornness of a bear, and you've got a most determined creature. So long as she thinks that you're helplessly lamed then she'd go to the ends of the earth to keep you from harm. And if you're keen on disappearing on us, and decide to go running off, then I do not envy you. She'll be dragging your back to the homestead by your ears before you'd gone three miles. And I can only imagine the pain of bein' dragged those three miles back by the ears..."

Penance's scowl softened. He looked back at the hallway, and then he slowly pulled up a chair to the opposite side of the table. He sat down slowly, still alert, and he didn't let go of the rusty knife in his free hand.

"Your wife doesn't know?" He asked. "About you, and how you are? And _she _isn't, uh, you know..." the boy motioned up and down his body with his free hand.

Uallas absently shook his head:

"Cadha is not one of us." He motioned between himself and Penance with his fingers. "She knows nothing of our 'situation', boy, and I'd prefer to keep it as such. And she's not my wife, point of fact. And little Struana is not my daughter. Ah, but you met Stru, did you not?"

Penance nodded.

"She's very, uh, spirited."

Uallas smiled as he stared down into the flames:

"Aye. She's quite the 'wee bonny lass', as they might say around these parts." He drawled these words with a different, mocking tone; the accent was very gruff, but somehow flowing, almost like a mixture of German and French, but not quite.

"Were you born in Scotland, originally?"

Uallas shook his head:

"No. I was born in a place called Évreux."

"I don't know where that is. Is it far away?"

"No. Not by distance, at least. By _time_? Well, perhaps it is. _My _Évreux, at least. Haven't been back there going on, well, what is it, now?" Uallas stared down at the tabletop, and then he scoffed. "Perhaps 500 years, I think. Give or take a few score."

Penance's moody countenance changed; suddenly his face burned with awe. The boy tried to hide it, but he failed; Uallas looked at the boy with a wry smile, and he slowly nodded at him. He was quite serious, it seemed.

"And you, child?" The man asked. "Where is 'home' for you? And _when _was home, for you? I know that I can hear the hint of a Spaniard's tongue in your mouth..."

Penance nodded. "I was born in a place called Zaragoza—"

"Ah," Uallas nodded. "So that would explain those rosary beads in your shirt. And Zaragoza, you say? Yes. Yes, I know this place. There is a very lovely palace there."

"_Aljafería_." The boy nodded.

Uallas chuckled and he looked over at Penance with an amused smirk:

"_There's _the Spaniard's tongue," he said. "You sound like you're coughing up a hairball—"

Penance quickly flushed; he snarled at the man, reverting back to his 'normal' accent:

"That's what it's called." His face softened. "When were you in Zaragoza?"

The man shrugged, tearing off another chunk of bread.

"Oh, it'd have been some time ago, I think. I was in the ranks with good ol' Alfonso the Battler's crusaders when they took the city. Now, that'd have been, uh—"

"1118," Penance whispered, staring down at the tabletop.

"Ah, a student of history, are we? Did we come from a noble household?"

Penance stared down at his feet. Eventually he shrugged.

"'Noble'? No, not really. But kinda of a certain station, I guess. I _was_ educated, a little. History was always my favorite subject..."

"Never cared for it much, myself," Uallas played with a small bread-carving knife on the table, spinning it against the tabletop. "It all just tends to blend together, after a while. Of course, the nice thing about 'education' is that it can be a lifelong pursuit, can't it?"

Penance furrowed his brow. He slowly looked up at the man:

"Tell me: why are we unable to be kill—"

The man held up a hand and shook his head. His wild gray hair whipped about as he did so, and he had to brush a few ratty strands from one shoulder before he spoke:

"The questions can wait, boy. As can the answers. At least for a time." The man stood up and cracked his back, moving with all the spryness of a withered 50-year-old man. "Before all that I'm afraid that I have to—"

Penance leapt to his feet, eyes intense:

"Crack my neck again?" He growled, brandishing that rusty knife.

Uallas smirked:

"I was going to say, 'visit the neighbors to barter a sheep', but I suppose if you really _want_—"

The boy frowned:

"A sheep?"

"Mmm. Cadha has it in her mind to whip up a little feast for your benefit. Maybe she's afraid that you're so out of sorts after your run in with those nasty 'brigands' that you're too spooked to eat." His smile widened. "She must think that you're a _real _baby bird!"

The man stepped into a pair of very large, study boots and cinched up the leather straps:

"I'd advise you to stay around the homestead, least you want Cadha on your tail. That woman'll swoop down on you fast, and she'll drop you back in the nest before you know you've been plucked up. Want to make yourself useful? I believe you could help Struana bring in some firewood with your 'free' arm..."

Penance let his guard down a bit, but not much. He slowly nodded.

"Okay..."

Uallas scratched his chin in contemplation as he stood before the door.

"Hmm. There was something else, wasn't there? Oh, yes! Of course. Just the little things, like names. I suppose I should have yours, shouldn't I? Unless you want me to keep calling you _Flath_ _Beag_."

The boy put his free hand on his hip and cocked one leg, defiant:

"First: do I call _you '_Uallas' or 'The Norman'?"

"Either," the man said. "Neither is my given. I was born with the name 'Ferrant', but it's quite out of style, I should say. 'Uallas' is in vogue these days, and I can't say I don't like the ring of it."

Penance looked to one side, and he nodded:

"Me? I've used a lot of names," he muttered, "in my time."

"And just how long is 'your time', if I may very rudely ask?"

Penance looked up at the man, and it was quite some time before he whispered an answer:

"I was born fifty-one years ago."

The old man smiled, wagging his head:

"Incredible, that. So that would make a grand total of, what, 40 years wandering, more or less?"

"I never counted—"

"Sure you did," the man said. "Every day, I'll bet. Just like the Israelites in the desert, no doubt. Well, when Cadha's done cooking for you, child, no doubt you'll feel like you've landed in Canaan." Uallas took a step forward, and Penance barely avoided tensing his body as the man approached. He laughed at this. "Heavens, boy: you've all the skittishness of a fox in the hunt, haven't you?" The man extended a hand to the boy: "I am Uallas of Letterewe, so very pleased to make your acquaintance, young..."

The boy slowly took his hand and shook it.

"Penance," he said.

"Ah, we picked an unassuming, conventional name, did we?" The man chuckled. "No doubt named for you father?"

The boy shook his head:

"It's not the name I was born with. It's just... well..."

"Your favorite. One you found that suits you," Uallas nodded. "I know a bit what that's like. Now, then: get going with that firewood. Do you want to keep poor Struana waiting forever? Unlike us, the poor lass hasn't got the time, has she? And keep that arm splinted up, too. It may be a tad absurd, I know, but our appearances are important to keep, are they not?"

Uallas tromped through the doorway and out of the house, leaving Penance by himself in the great room. The boy spent a moment looking around, uncertain, before finally moving to that same doorway. Before his feet could cross the threshold he paused and stood still for a time. Finally he tossed the rusty knife on the tabletop, and it clattered loudly in the quiet of the room.

X

X

X

He only managed to help Struana with one bundle of firewood before Cadha spotted him awkwardly lugging it around with his free arm. She dragged him back into the house, roundly chastising him for 'trying to ruin my expert work on that bone o' yours!' Instead she had him collect some herbs growing behind the house, and by the time Uallas was back with the butchered sheep remains the woman turned the entirety of the house into a well-oiled machine, driven towards the sole purpose of serving up a grand little feast.

Penance was allowed to help Cadha with the cooking while Uallas and his neighbors visited the man's forge up on the hill, presumably to talk 'shop', but the reeking stench of whiskey on their breaths when they retuned hinted at the real reason for the journey. It was just as well: Cadha ran her kitchen like a military base, and Penance quickly learned to jump at her commands or get pulled along with her by the ear.

And by the end of the whole process he had a very smart ear, indeed.

She started with a great pot of boiling salt water, where a mess of all the stinking organs of the sheep cooked for some time. Penance thought this strange, because it all looked like offal to him; there wasn't a bit of butchered muscle in the mix. Heck, he thought he could even see the creature's _tongue _sticking out of the mix. He mentioned this to Cadha, only to get a wooden ladle to the skull for his effort.

He did not question the woman's cooking habits again.

While Penance chopped onions and herbs Cadha tended to a certain rubbery-looking part of the sheep, massaging it in cold water while also tending to a batch of dry oats that were set out to toast over the fire. Once the boiling pot of offal was 'done' Cadha drained it and took her knife to it all, mincing the steaming organs into fine bits. She rudely pushed Penance away from his onions and herbs and began sprinkling handfuls of the stuff into the minced offal, her hand steady and eyes wide with concentration; she had all the countenance of a surgeon tending to a grievous wound. All at once, and with no explanation at all, she declared the mixture 'done', and then the seasoned offal got stirred up with those toasted oats and the whole thing was poured into that strange rubbery vessel, now stretched thin from its long massage in the cold salt bath. Penance watched with great confusion as Cadha bound the vessel closed with twine and then dumped the whole thing back into the boiling salt water, where it would cook for some time.

His confusion was understandable: Penance was just trying to figure out when Cadha would actually start cooking the _dinner_ they were all going to eat. He kept his doubts even as he helped prepare potatoes and carrots to go along with the concoction. Even after he was forced to take an early seat at the table in the great room (so as not to further 'strain' his poor arm) Penance wondered how such a meal as this could possibly be considered edible. At the very least, he thought, the meal should be memorable.

About that, at least, he was right.

That night Penance dined on the finest meal he could ever remember eating in his life. The offal, oats and herbs came out of that rubbery vessel as a delicate, steaming pudding, and the flavor was ungodly savory. It had a spicy kick up front, with a strange and nutty taste after that. The whole thing was amazing, almost 'caressing' the boy's palate and hitting all his taste buds in a wonderful little cadence, like a fine orchestral arrangement. He was given an entire finger of whiskey to drink with it, and the smoky liquor burned against his tongue; it was the perfect complement to the nuttiness of the dish.

He could barely move after dinner, but he did his best to help Cadha and Struana clear the table, while Uallas and his neighbors commiserated some more outside the house. Finally, with night long-since covering the land, and the neighbors having begun their journey back home, Penance found Uallas up near his hilltop, leaning against that giant, curious stone with all the strange carvings in it.

"Tell me: why are we what we are?" The boy asked.

Uallas chuckled, looking up at the great mass of stars in the moonless sky:

"Ah, is that _really _all you want to know? I encountered another of us, once, when I was still learning my trade, and we wondered the same question. His answer was: 'Why does the sun come up? Or are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night'?" The man looked down at Penance. "I suppose his answer meant that you are what you are _because_ you are. Tautological, isn't it?"

"Meaningless," Penance growled. "And _stupid_."

"Oh, yes. But, then I think the trick is to find some meaning _in _the meaninglessness of it all. When I look up at the stars I don't wonder why they glow so long; I instead wonder why some of them fade away into darkness. I cannot answer either question, but instead I do what I can to accept that _both _circumstances are the right and just course of nature."

He looked down at the boy, and he must've registered Penance's displeasure with the answer. Uallas sighed and slumped down against the giant carved stone, resting in the grass. Penance got to his haunches in response. The boy absently toyed with the rosary around his neck, fingers limply shuttling along the wooden beads. It was a subconscious move; Penance didn't even notice he was doing it. Uallas noticed, but he said nothing.

"Let me put it another way: this land around you is beautiful. Enchanting, really. But it is also most savage and cold. It is a hard land to live in, and by most standards civilization is quite limited, here. To call oneself a 'Highlander' is to embrace that primordial savagery, and accept that one is of a certain constitution: that they will do whatever is necessary to survive when their back is to the wall. I have not lived in Scotland long, by my standards, but I do have the ego to consider myself a 'Highlander'. Now consider the meal you ate just this night, and the care you've been given since you awoke; Cadha is a beacon of warmth in this savage land, and Struana a little ray of sunshine. They exist even in the heart of all the bleakness and hardship around them. This is a world that takes all kinds, my dear Penance, and we are merely of a certain kind. One of many."

Penance stared at the grass, still dissatisfied with the answer.

"But mostly," Uallas continued, "I think that my friend's answer was simply a warning. He was telling me that, in this Game, there are no points awarded for being philosophical."

"What is the 'Game'?"

"A test. A grand challenge, _Mo Flath_ _Beag_, to see who among us has in them that certain constitution; to see who will do whatever is necessary to survive when their back is to the wall."

"What are the rules?"

Uallas smiled:

"For an adult Immortal? There are several. For you? There are very few. It doesn't completely make up for your natural disadvantage, I suppose. And it doesn't change the overall outcome one bit. The Game is guided by one rule which supersedes all, and it is the first thing you must learn, because whether you choose to play the Game or not, there are those out there who would not hesitate to play the Game with _you_."

Penance looked up at Uallas, his iron blue eyes trembling in the moonlight. Something about the way the old man spoke these last few words set a chill in his blood, and not even the fine dinner in his stomach, nor the whiskey coursing through his veins, could warm his body up again.

"What is that rule, Uallas?"

The man looked down at the boy, and in his face was all the seriousness of death:

"The rule, my dear Penance, is that 'there can be only _one_'."


	8. Mono No Aware

"Mono No Aware"

**Letterewe – 1650**

Cadha was up ungodly early the next morning, and she took Struana with her to a riverbank about a half mile down from the homestead. There, under the first rays of daylight, the ladies washed linens in the stream. This was all punctuated with brief 'splash fight' breaks instigated by Struana, much to her mother's displeasure.

Penance followed them down, and he watched them work while leaning against a nearby beech tree. The boy played with pieces of flaky bark until a shadow came up to his side.

"Bloody hell," Uallas hid his eyes from the sunrise. "This is no time for a man to be out an' about..." He cradled his head, yawning loudly.

"I'd think you have plenty of morning chores to do on a homestead like this," Penance said.

"Ah, true enough. But those chores are all the _ladies' _domain. I'm quite happy to leave it to them."

"Chivalrous," the boy grumbled.

Uallas made a very unattractive noise through his nose, something like a snort mixed with a sneeze.

"I'm often up at the forges until dawn every day they have metal to bring me from the boats in the loch. And if I happen to be whipping up a batch of 'liquid steel' for my more, uh, 'select' customers then I can spend days at a time slaving away over the workbench. Not to be immodest dear boy, but my steel doesn't exactly sell for cheap, and none in my homestead wants for a thing. We needn't even maintain livestock, if we didn't really want to. The division of labor is a fair one."

"I feel like a louse, not being about to help..." Penance stared down at his splintered arm. "But then I remember that this was all your doing, and so _you're _the louse. As usual." He stuck his tongue out at the man.

"Charming," Uallas muttered. "Anyway, you're not here to work for your room and board, are you? No, my dear Penance, you're here to learn."

The man turned around and began walking back up to the homestead, but Penance stopped him:

"I'm here to learn, and in exchange for _what_, Uallas? Am I to believe that you'll teach me what I need to know out of the kindness of your heart?"

Uallas looked back at the boy; his expression was ineffable.

"Yes," he said simply.

"What if I told you I think you're a lying sack of shit?"

A small grin spread across the man's thin lips. He approached the boy, nodding:

"First: I'd say that lips so young needn't foul themselves with such language—"

"My lips are _old_—"

"Not to the sight, nor to the touch—"

"Eww. You're not gonna start getting weird on me now, are you?"

"The second thing I'd say," Uallas continued, "is that you're not so unintelligent, it seems. We might be able to skip a few lessons in your training. The first thing I was going to teach you, child, is that you should trust no one. Seems you've already got a handle on that lesson."

"So why should I trust _you_, anyway?"

"You broke bread with us, did you not? I'd think the fine meal, and the warmth of company should allay your concerns—"

"I thanked _Cadha _for the meal; she's the one that made it. You spent all that time drinking whiskey. And yeah, the meal was good. But, still: why should I trust _you_, Uallas?"

The man looked over at Cadha and her daughter as they scrubbed linens in the stream. The morning sunlight hit both women with golden rays, and it beamed beautifully off the water.

"Struana was born right there," he motioned. "Right on that riverbank, not one hundred feet from where the two of 'em are kneeling, now."

Penance followed the man's gaze, and then he looked back up at him:

"You were there for that?"

Uallas nodded.

"Mmm. I wasn't settled at this homestead, then. No, I was much closer to the loch. At the time I was scouting locations and looking for a good place to set up a new forge a little further away from all others. I get these rather intense moods every few decades; it's a certain sulkiness, and a great desire to be all alone by myself. But this time it didn't quite pan out. Cadha's folk hails from further north of here, up around the tall mountains, and it was there that she lived with her husband, on her own homestead.

"The winter was particularly cruel, however, and her husband suffered greatly, working out in the elements, until his lungs took to rotting. He died in their small cabin, leaving Cadha so very ripe with their daughter, and with precious few supplies. Without provisions she was doomed to certain starvation, unless of course she thought to eat Struana after birthing her."

At first Penance nodded with disinterest at the man's words, but then his head shot up quickly. He gave Uallas a frightful, cold stare.

"What?" The man shrugged. "Desperate times, and all—"

"Eating a _baby_?"

"Well, rodents and such will, if a mother hasn't the strength to nurse her litter—"

"Humans aren't rodents!"

"Well, some aren't, perhaps. In any event, Cadha did what a mother had to do, struggling down the mountain, and to the last she crawled on her hands and knees for Letterewe— what could be her only hope. She wouldn't make it, of course, and in her exhaustion her labor pains began.

"With her last ounce of strength she tried crawling to the water's edge, looking for at least some kind of refreshment in her final moments. I found her that way, writhing like a worm at my feet, screaming in the pain of birthing, desperate for at least a drink. I remember standing over her, then, and looking down at her frail little body. Do you know what I thought, then, in that very instant? I thought about the day _she_ must have been born— Cadha— this miserable little thing beneath me, and I realized that, to me, the day of her birth might've been yesterday, or even mere _hours _ago, for all the impact those years would leave on me. After all, my dear Penance, when you get to be over 500 years old you'll begin to see the lifespan of a normal human being as almost insignificant, very like the life of a worm writhing at your feet."

Penance looked back over at the women kneeling in the stream. He furrowed his brow:

"That's a disgusting way to think about others."

Uallas shook his head:

"No. It's only perspective. It's the _natural _way to look at others, when you're like us, because that is how it truly is. What's disgusting, or not, is how you _react _to that perspective, and there are two ways to react, I think. For one: this realization can make you discount the value of mortal life. There's no reason to really care about something so frail and transient, after all. A normal person becomes like livestock to be milked in the pen, or weeds to be pulled up from the ground: a means to whatever end an Immortal heart desires."

Uallas watched as little Struana took another one of her 'breaks', wading out into the stream as Cadha sternly ordered her back. The water shimmered in the sunlight as she splashed it, and the sight made the man smile.

"There is another way to look at things," he said. "Seeing the fragile nature of all the life around him— the delicateness, and its fleetingness— a man might find himself all the more appreciative to be in its presence." He looked down at Penance. "I take it you've never been to the Orient?"

The boy shook his head.

"Figured as much," Uallas nodded. "Well, on the island of Japan they have a certain philosophy— it is how their culture views all those fragile little things not made to last long in this world. They call it 'an awareness of things'."

Penance snorted:

"They couldn't think of a better name than that?"

Uallas shrugged:

"It sounds slightly more meaningful in the native tongue. Anyway, the Japanese have a certain respect for the fleeting nature of a phenomenon— like familiar shapes in a passing cloud soon to scatter, or the magnificence of a cherry blossom in full bloom— for those precious few days it blooms— right before it lilts off its tree to die on the cold, hard ground. The people there do not view such things as meaningless; they consider the full impact such things leaves on _them_, in their own lives, and when those things inevitably fade away they reflect on its passing with deep contemplation, and respect. The thing is assigned even _more_ value exactly because its life is so short. It's made all the more special that way."

The man chuckled to himself, and he leaned against the beech tree.

"Well, I got water for Cadha, and then I tended to her as best I could. She delivered little Stru right then and there, mere minutes after I happened upon her. The li'l lass popped out of her like a cannonball from the bore. Uh, not to be indelicate, mind you—"

Penance tried to hide the flush in his cheeks.

"Too late," he muttered.

"Struana went careening right into the creek. She nearly floated away before I snatched her out of the water, dried her off and set her in her mother's arms. And then, when I stared down at Cadha and her babe— both of them a haggard and awful sight, just huddling together, delirious..." Uallas stopped speaking for a moment and stared down at the grass beneath his feet. "Ah, no: it wasn't two pitiable worms writhing at my feet, then, Penance. They were lovely cherry blossoms— rare and precious— and they were shining in the sun." He shook his head and scoffed. "Would you believe Cadha gave me the right to name her little girl as a reward? I thought to name her 'Sakura'..."

Penance squinted.

"'Sakura'?"

Uallas waved a hand, smirking.

"Not important. But, in her good sense, Cadha got me to change my mind a few days later."

"What does any of this have to do with me trusting you, Uallas? I'm not like your little adopted family, here; I'm like you."

The man cleared his throat and looked back to the grand hills behind his homestead, as if shielding himself from the rising sun:

"No, you are _unlike _me, child. Immortals of your tender age do not tend to last long, Penance. In the grand design of the Game, young lads and lasses are too often merely lambs to the slaughter. The odds, you see, are so very firmly set against you..."

Penance's eyes widened. He remembered what Uallas told him on top of that hill, when he first reached the homestead:

"You once said my situation is 'completely hopeless'."

"But, also, that I like a hopeless cause, _mo flath beag_." The man looked back at Penance, and he smiled.

"You said kids like me are lambs to the slaughter, Uallas? You told me that other Immortals would kill us. That we _die_? Is that right?"

The man nodded gravely.

"How does that happen?" Penance whispered.

The man took a deep breath, and he motioned beyond the homestead.

"I'll show you," he whispered.

X

X

X

Penance could only die if his head were removed from his shoulders.

That was pretty straightforward, actually.

"Uh, and _why _is that?"

"Other than the fact that your head would look _awfully _funny just kinda rolling about on its own, with you gabbing on about how bummed you are, not having a body? After all: if an Immortal's head falls in the forest, should it _keep_ making a sound? I think not..."

Uallas held up one of his creations, a mighty silver longsword, and he paced around the boy. Penance held up another sword from the man's stock, or rather he tried to hold it up, but it trembled even in his two hands. They'd lugged the things all the way out into the deepest woods behind the homestead. Penance thought this trip was for privacy, but Uallas mentioned something about how they needed to have 'some space' away from that giant carved stone in the middle of his land.

Penance wouldn't have minded, otherwise, but the sword was _ungodly_ heavy...

"That stone rising out of the ground on the homestead is very old; it was carved by an elder civilization and they called Scotland home over a thousand years before the Roman Empire trundled up into England." Uallas continued moving in a predatory circle around the boy. "That stone declared that the land all around it is sacred, consecrated by their gods."

Uallas took a slow swing at Penance, who could barely raise his sword to counter. When he did the boy went reeling back, nearly landing square on his rear.

"By the rules of the Game, those interested in playing must do single-combat with their opponent, bladed weapons only, and they must fight fairly and honorably until one of them loses their head, after which the victor claims their strength. But above all we must _never_ fight on holy ground, Penance."

"Why?"

Uallas' smile curled up into something much darker; the man shook his head, his large hazel eyes boring into the boy like daggers:

"Ah, well, if you ever do then 'interesting' things tend to happen..."

X

X

X

Uallas led him northward until they reached the banks of another loch, and along a bank of cliffs Uallas ushered the boy into a small, hidden cave. He ordered Penance to sit on the moss-carpeted stones as he lit a small lantern, and it cast sickly yellow light all about. The greasy fumes of the lantern blended with the dank musk of the cavern; the smell was noxious.

"Hold your pose," Uallas barked at Penance as he saw the boy wrinkle his nose. "Eyes closed, head bowed, and mind _clear_..."

"You mentioned that one Immortal who kills another gains their 'strength'," Penance mumbled. "What did you mean by that?"

"There is a certain thing," Uallas said, "that moves inside an Immortal's body. Much like the pulse of a beating heart, or the churn of the blood in one's veins. The only difference is that the life energy of an Immortal is intangible, and ineffable; it is something from beyond all things alive— _superseding_ life itself— its nature known only to whatever great Source may have birthed it." Uallas carefully set the lantern down between them, and he got cross-legged directly across from the boy. "It cannot be felt in the same way a beating heart can, nor spilled as easily as blood from a vein. But in death an Immortal body unleashes all that it is, beyond its physical form, and imparts that power to the nearest Immortal body, giving it all that it _was_. We call this the 'Quickening', and in it the victorious Immortal acts as a kind of lightning rod for all that dispelled power."

Penance, eyes still closed, furrowed his brow:

"Sounds like it would hurt."

"No. No, on the contrary, Penance, it's... it's _exhilarating_..."

The boy opened his eyes, and he blinked in the darkness of the cave:

"You've taken Immortal heads before, Uallas?"

The man had been staring at the far cave wall, eyes dreamy, but he quickly snapped back to the moment and looked at the boy:

"Yes," he nodded. "I have. I played the game well, in my time, but I no longer see fit to, anymore. Maybe 635 years of life produce a certain maturity in a man, and make him see beyond the need to fight and kill?" He scoffed. "Or maybe it takes that long for a man to simply lose his balls, and become the womanly coward? Ah, who knows, child?"

"You said before that 'there can be only _one_'. Isn't that right?"

Uallas nodded.

Penance looked at the man intently, and his iron blue eyes burned in the crackling light of the lantern:

"Uallas, if there were only you, and me, and we were the _only two _left, would you try to—"

"Before you ask that question, child, I want you to consider this: do you _really _want me to give you an answer?"

Silence ruled the cave. The pair sat across from each other, staring into each other's eyes, and both man and boy might've been cave paintings on the wall, or rocks rising from the earth, for all the movement between them.

"No," Penance whispered.

The man smiled.

"Hmm. Good. Now, then: eyes closed..."

Penance did so, and he listened as Uallas fed him words. Nothing made much sense to him; they were all vague directions, like 'pretend you're reaching out into a pit, and feeling the darkness there, only there's _not _just darkness, is there'? He was ordered to 'search' for the light in the darkness.

Put simply: the boy had no idea what the hell he was doing.

But then, all of a sudden, and after God knew how much time had passed, Penance felt his insides 'turn'. It all happened when he lost focus entirely, and Uallas' droning words became a low and faint 'buzz' in his brain. Penance was still turning that mental image in his mind, reaching down into a black pit, but then— out of nowhere— there _was_ something other than the darkness. It was like a hand, and it grabbed the boy by his scruff and yanked him down into that pit. Penance got that weird feeling as if he were falling in a dream, but instead of waking with a start he could feel an odd sensation; it was as if his mind were 'spreading' all across the cavern, like butter on toast. He could feel his brain's reach 'expanding'. He caught a startled breath in his throat, and then, for just a fraction of a moment, he looked up and he could see Uallas. He could tell everything about him: his distance, his posture, his smell, and his temperament, and all if it came rushing into his eyes.

But his eyes were still tightly shut.

Penance collapsed forward, and when he managed to open his eyes and look up he saw Uallas towering over him, holding the lantern up.

"Wh— what _was _that?" Penance managed.

"It was a good start," the man smiled.

X

X

X

He took Penance to the rocks above the cliff, and they watched the setting sun.

"We adult Immortals have a certain 'sense' for each other's presence; we can feel each other nearby quite keenly, and it is without effort that we do so."

"Because of that power, right?"

"Just so," Uallas nodded. "Now, a child's body is a different matter. Inside your body courses that same Immortal power, Penance, but it is of a different 'hue', so to speak. Perhaps it's simply not _enough _power, being inside a body so small, but for whatever reason it is nigh impossible for an adult Immortal to sense a child's presence." Uallas looked down at Penance and patted the boy's shoulder. "That is to say, my dear boy: you are practically invisible to our kind."

"Then how'd you find me at Dunbar?" Penance asked.

Uallas shrugged:

"Oh, a touch of the skin's enough. And touch I did, when I was ordered to remove bodies from the Covenanter camp."

"Inside the cave, when I could feel you, even without _seeing _you—"

Uallas nodded:

"You have the power to see all Immortals around you, but it is not an effortless thing. It requires the deepest of meditations, and it is a skill you must develop. Along with your final 'advantage'..."

Penance looked up at the man:

"What's that?"

"Your small body: it _will _heal faster than other Immortals, Penance, if you take the time to 'develop' that gift. If you develop it enough then you'll even have the ability to awaken from any 'deaths' you may suffer at a tremendous rate."

"How do I develop it?" Penance asked.

Uallas scoffed.

"Well, there's only one way, really..."

Suddenly, and without warning, Uallas took his sword and lunged for the boy. Penance tried to block, but he couldn't raise his sword fast enough, and the man pierced Penance's stomach quite easily. The brought the boy to his knees, hands on his wound, and he glared up at the man while coughing up a wad of blood:

"Would you _stop _doing that, you _asshole_?"

Uallas shook his head as he disinterestedly cleaned his blade.

"No, in fact I won't. Suffering wounds and 'deaths' is what will develop that healing rate—"

"But you're _ambushing _me—"

"Yes, I am," Uallas nodded. "And get used to it. That'll be our training method, Penance. And it'll be that way because that's how _you _will be beheaded, if an Immortal chooses to attack you. If you don't learn to see it coming, then you'll be at the Pearly Gates before you know what's happened—"

"You said all fights are single-combat," Penance moved his hands a little to inspect his wound; to his displeasure he found that it had _not _quite healed up, yet. "And _honorable _combat, too!"

The man snorted through his nose:

"What 'honor' is there in facing down a young boy, swords crossed? No, Penance. It was decided at some point long ago that forcing children to cross blades with adults was a particularly heartless exercise. Honesty: I could train you for decades, and in the end you'd be a _superb_ swordsman, by technique, but when you can barely even lock blades with an opponent without falling on your arse from the weight of the weapons, well, the purpose is somewhat defeated..."

"So it's _less _heartless to just ambush kids and rip their heads off without warning?"

Uallas nodded.

"Yes, it is. Especially when those children are _also _allowed to ambush, without repercussion, and especially when those children are for all intents and purposes _invisible _to the adults that they are competing with."

Penance's ragged breaths suddenly came up short. The boy cocked his head, at last aware of the full potential of these disparate 'advantages'.

Uallas chuckled, registering the surprise on the boy's face. He slowly sat down beside the Penance, knees cracking, and he ruffled the child's hair.

"That's alright, Penance. For the moment, at least, I can do your thinking for you. And right now I'm thinking of a proper weapon we might give you..."

Penance stared at the giant broadsword in his lap:

"What: a sword?"

Uallas shook his head:

"Ah, no, lad. I'm thinking something more 'befitting' your juvenile frame. Perhaps a butter knife..."

Penance glared up at the man, and that made Uallas laugh even harder:

"Don't sell me short, just yet. You'd be amazed what things we can conjure, with the power of 'liquid steel'..."

The sun finally set down on the horizon, and for a few minutes the pair watched it in silence.

"Another day," the man finally said. "I must be north of a quarter-million of them, by now. That many sunrises, and that many sunsets..." He looked down at the boy. "This day is special for me, though. It's the end of an age..."

"What age?"

Uallas shrugged.

"I've never taken another Immortal under my wing, Penance. Never. You see for all my strengths I consider myself a lousy teacher..." Uallas took a small flask out from his vest and gulped down three deep swigs.

Penance smiled at the man:

"Well, maybe I'll be a lousy _student_, huh? It kinda balances out, right?"

Uallas looked down at Penance, and he smiled. He handed the boy the flask, and Penance took a small nip of whiskey. When he handed it back to the man Uallas took another big swig. He sighed dramatically and shrugged:

"_Mono No Aware_," Uallas whispered.

"What's that?" Penance asked.

"That Japanese phrase I told you about: that appreciation for things that are not destined to last. Penance, I must be honest: I'm feeling that right now." Again he ruffled the boy's hair. "And I feel it very keenly, indeed..."

"What: about _me_, you mean? You really don't like my chances, do you, Uallas?"

The man's somber face slowly melted away into a dopey grin. He held his flask upside down, and only a few stray drops of whiskey fell from it:

"Nope," he chuckled. "But a dead child is merely off-putting, _mo flath beag_. An empty flask, Penance? Now _that _is a distressing tragedy!"


	9. Whippoorwill of Freedom

"Whippoorwill of Freedom"

**Philadelphia – 1984**

He poked his head in the door, eyes shifting back and forth quickly. The place was not so much 'run down' as it was falling apart, literally. It was once a corner apartment on the top floor of the abandoned block, but now a good portion of its walls were open to the elements entirely. It looked like the place had suffered some kind of catastrophic water damage in the past— maybe a faulty plumbing line, or its sprinklers— and suffice to say that damage was never repaired.

The moldy wallpaper once displayed some kind of bird motif— maybe chaffinches— and it looked like it had been left to rot some time during the Lincoln administration (it hadn't, of course; Penance knew that they had different designs in vogue back then). Everywhere there was debris and broken fixtures, except in a few choice places where they'd been swept aside.

Simply put? Penance would call the place 'quasi-post-apocalyptic'.

The girl— 'Whip'— called to him from the next 'room', as it was:

"Come on in, white bread. What're you, scared or something?"

Penance took a few steps into the apartment.

"At first I was thinking you'd have those guys waiting to jump me, again—"

"You got no money, and you got nothing to _trade_ for money, kid. Don't gotta be afraid of bein' jumped, anymore..."

"Yeah," Penance mumbled as he stepped through the debris field, "well now I'm a little afraid of getting tetanus..."

Whip told him what he could do to himself; it made him smirk.

Penance joined the girl in the far room; it was once a corner bedroom in the apartment. The roof was almost entirely gone here, and the girl had a narrow mattress nestled against the far corner on the floor. She could sleep under the stars, he thought. That was nice, at least.

Penance stopped in the center of Whip's open-air room. His cigarette had nearly burned down to his lips, and he reluctantly tossed it on the floor.

"Hey!" Whip snarled. "Are you an animal?"

Her ferocity made the boy start. He followed her gaze, and then quickly retrieved the cigarette butt from that colossal mess that was— allegedly— a 'floor'.

"Uh, sorry," he muttered. "But, um..." the boy looked around. "You said you had food?"

Whip took a knee beside her mattress and stuck one hand underneath. She pulled out a pair of granola bars, and she tossed Penance one. The boy slowly moved to the far side of the 'room' and sat on a chunk of bricks that once composed the outside wall. His legs dangled in the breeze, and it was a good six story drop to the ground below.

"I'd tell you to be careful, kid," she motioned to the drop-off. "But I guess you know how to handle a fall."

Penance shrugged noncommittally. Whip motioned to Galabeg, still wedged in the front collar of the boy's Cal Ripken shirt.

"Dunno why you carry around that _fox's_ head with you; I'd have called you a cat."

The boy shook his head. He worked his words around the stale granola bar:

"I don't have nine lives."

"Too bad."

"One's more than enough."

"What's your name?" Whip asked.

"Cameron," he said.

"'Cameron' what?"

"Penance Cameron."

It wasn't quite the introduction to rival James Bonds'. Whip's lips curled up in a doubtful smirk. She batted her eyes and grunted. As she spoke she started working to undo that massive French-braid ponytail at the back of her head:

"'Penance'? Right. Well, my name's 'Reconciliation'—"

"Your name is 'Whip'."

"—and those two friends of mine from earlier were 'Damnation' and 'Absolution'—"

"Hey, _Whip_,if we're gonna start arguing about weird names—"

"'Whip' is my nickname, kid. And, for a nickname, it happens to sound very, very cool."

Penance cocked his head:

"What's your real name, then?"

The girl looked to one side, her face scrunched in a scowl. That delicate constellation of freckles dotting the brown skin of her cheek seemed to swirl about as she tightened her lips.

"My real name's Will," she mumbled.

Penance smirked. He looked over at her:

"'Will' what?"

"That's my _last _name, you little tool!" She glared at him. "My first name is... uh, Willa."

"'Willa'," Penance turned the name over in his head for a moment, nodding approvingly. "Well, that name doesn't really sound so..." he paused, furrowing his brow. When he looked back at the girl his face beamed with a grin:

"_Willa Will_?"

The girl looked away.

He really did try not to, but he failed: Penance laughed, and it was a very long and spirited laugh, too.

Whip held up a finger, and she snarled at the boy:

"That's the _last time _you ever get to say it, white bread! Far as you're concerned, my name is _Whip_."

"Where'd 'Whip' come from, anyway?"

"When I was a kid—"

"You're not, still?" Penance chuckled.

"I'm older than you are, _kid_. Now shut the hell up and respect your 'elder', hmm?"

"That's good advice. "I wish more people did that, actually..." Penance lay back on the exposed bricks, resting his head in his arms. He winced as the spiked dog collar around his neck dug into his flesh. He had to reorient himself and cup his hands around the back of his neck to lie comfortably.

"We lived in this hole-in-the-wall shack on the city limits. Sucked, really. It was always cold in the winter, and we'd get bad pest problems— like raccoons and possums. The woods were right outside our busted kitchen door, and..." she shook her head. "It just _really_ sucked, you know? But at night there were these birds— I never saw 'em, 'cause they were so quick and small— and they'd go on calling into the woods, making a racket. They were just another nuisance, but when I was really little I thought they were sayin' my name. Sounded a little like it, I mean. Like they were _calling _to me." Whip rested on her side on the ratty mattress, fist to her temple, and she shrugged. "It'd make me smile, sometimes. Even when..."

She quickly looked up at the boy; her brown eyes changed from soft little globes to tiger's eyes in an instant. She slowly relaxed, but she remained in a guarded pose.

"...the birds— they just sounded nice. That's all."

Penance stared up at the sky for a moment. He mouthed the girl's full name, soundlessly, a few times over.

"They were whippoorwills, is that right? That's the bird you heard."

She nodded.

"Well, you're right, you know." He said.

"About what?"

Penance smirked:

"The name does sound pretty cool..."

Whip got up and moved to a ruined fireplace against the wall. She reached up into it, and when her hand came out she held a sooty bottle of bourbon; it was half empty. Penance stared at the golden liquid inside that bottle. Whip cracked the top and took a rather dainty nip of it. She wiped her mouth and noticed the boy staring at her.

"You, uh, want a belt?" She held out the bottle. "I mean, I wouldn't normally offer it to a little kid like you, but, um, since you already smoke, and all..."

The boy's eyes lingered on the whiskey, watching the bright amber liquid slosh in the bottle. He realized he was licking his lips. Penance quickly turned away and looked back out at the view. He shook his head gently.

"No, thanks," he mumbled. "I, uh, can't."

"Don't have a taste for it?"

"No, that's not it. I'm an addict..."

Whip chuckled. She wedged the bottle back up inside the fireplace.

"That's pretty funny. You're a weird kid, Penance. You know that?"

"Yes, I do." He looked back at the girl, his face less somber. "And thanks."

Whip again lay on her mattress. The girl began absently breaking apart her granola bar into small pieces, leaving them balanced on her chest.

"Seriously: I just can't do 'Penance'. Think I'm gonna call you 'Pen', if that's alright."

"You wouldn't be the first."

"I'll bet. So, can I ask you a question, Pen?" She looked over at the boy, and her deep brown eyes were deathly serious.

Penance shrugged:

"It's a free country," he mumbled. "Right _now_, at least."

"How did you survive that fall?"

"I told you—"

"Don't care what you told me," Whip interrupted. "I saw you fall straight down, and I saw you splatter on the concrete. Should've been able to scrape off what was left of you with an ice cream scoop."

"I'm lucky," Penance said.

Whip scoffed. The girl began throwing those bits of granola up into the air, catching each one in her mouth.

"'Luck' is makin' it home before it rains. 'Luck' is getting' an extra bag of chips from the vendin' machine. What I saw happen to you is nothing short of _blessed_. You got someone upstairs looking out for you, Pen."

Penance grit his teeth. He again stared into the sunset, shaking his head:

"No, I don't. And I'm _not_ 'blessed', either. Not by any god you're thinking of, anyway."

"Well, lucky or not, kid, you better watch yourself on these streets. Philly is a hell of a town to live in, if you got nothin' to live _on_. And, no offense, but you're a little runt, you know. If I were you I'd mosey on over to a shelter, somewhere. Maybe you should get yourself put into the system. Nice white boy like you should get himself a cozy little foster home—"

Whip tossed another small piece of granola into the air. Before it landed in her mouth, however, a fearsome white blur sailed into it, obliterating the tasty morsel. Penance's little dagger landed in the ruined wall behind her blade first, its wooden handle still quivering from the force of the throw.

Whip got to her knees and stared at the knife for a moment. She then looked back to Penance, at first awed, and then royally pissed.

"Y— you could've _killed _me!"

"Only if I wanted to," Penance sneered at her. "Point is I don't need any foster homes. Or 'systems'. I do just fine on my own."

Whip looked back at the knife. She pulled it from the wall— with great difficulty— and surveyed the silvery blade.

"What's up with this thing, anyway?" She mumbled as she ran her fingers along the blade's mottled surface. She surveyed all the strange banding patterns in the steel. "This thing is weird. What's with all these squiggly lines? A _good _blade is supposed to be all nice and smooth, isn't it? This thing almost looks like it's made out of water." She looked up at Penance. "Whoever made this must not have known what the hell they were doing."

Penance shuffled over to the girl and took the weapon back:

"You'd disagree, if you were on the wrong side of it..." Penance knelt down and wedged the little knife back into his sock, nestled alongside his calf.

The sound of bells brought him back up to his feet, alerting like a deer in the glen. He narrowed his eyes, and then he moved to the far 'wall' of the room, gazing down toward the ground.

"Are those church bells?" He asked.

"Yeah. St. Hubertus is right across the street. It's the only real reason we see any 'proper' folk around this block at all. And then only on Sunday. We're run-down and out, for most anything else. They say the only things left in this neighborhood that's still runnin' are the kids— from the police— and the bells of St. Hubertus."

Penance stared down at the place. It was a Gothic-influenced church, small in size but grand in its design. The walls were weathered stone, all of them burned down to a cold, hard gray. Two flying buttresses supported the main building on either side— obviously an artistic choice. The only buildings Penance had ever seen that _needed _a flying buttress were several orders of magnitude bigger than this building. A round stained-glass window graced the main worship space, and it leered out across the street at him, like a cold and empty eye. All the beauty of the window, of course, would only show on the inside; it wasn't the kind of thing he could see from where he was. All in all the church was very pretty, but still the building was a poser, Penance thought, trying to pretend that it was built in a bygone era. He didn't really mind the forgery.

In fact, it amused him a great deal.

"Nice place," he mumbled.

Whip shrugged:

"If you're into that kinda thing. It's 'trendy' for the well-to-do to come down and worship. Funny how they gotta walk into this busted-ass neighborhood to do it, though, and they all act like they're touring a leper colony, or something."

"You're no leper, Whip. A _ball-buster_, though?" Penance shrugged.

The boy's eyes were drawn to a small kit beside Whip's mattress. It was a makeup case, and it held an assortment of personal products. Many of them were quite old, and their bottles covered with grime, but the contents inside were obviously treated as if they were liquid gold. Penance selected a small tube of hair dye, and he looked it over thoughtfully.

"What color is this?"

"Uh, blonde, I think."

The boy smirked:

"Thinking of going towhead?"

"Please, white bread." Whip casually tousled her long, free-flowing hair. "It'd take about a dozen tubes like that to dye me up. And blonde isn't exactly my color—"

"Mine, either." He held up the tube. "Mind if I borrow it, though?"

Whip considered the little bottle for a moment, and then finally she gave him a grudging nod. Penance pocketed it, and then he moved to the far side of the room, his back to the setting sun, and stared at the sheer six story drop before him. Below him the sunset couldn't reach; the alley down there was covered in darkness, and completely invisible to the eye.

"You're gonna dye yourself up, hmm?" Whip said. "Change appearances? Why? Do you have to? Is someone lookin' for you?"

"You never know..."

"You got family back in Baltimore?"

Penance looked back at Whip, and she motioned to his Cal Ripkin shirt. Penance shook his head, again looking away:

"Family? No, no family. Just a few people who might miss me. Just a little bit. But they'll get over it."

"Will _you_ get over missin' them?"

Penance looked back at Whip, and he scowled at her dangerously. Whip held up a hand:

"Look, kiddo: I don't mean to pry, but—"

"Yeah, you do," he snarled. "And it's kinda pissing me off. I don't give two shits about anyone in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in this whole damned country, or anywhere _else_, you got it? I do just fine on my _own_—"

"Whatever you say," Whip interrupted. "But, then, you _do _talk to a stuffed fox head, don't you?"

Penance was ready with a sly comeback, but Whip's words caught him in the throat. He swallowed, hard, and he took Galabeg out of his shirt front and stuffed the thing into his back pocket.

"Look, never mind," Whip shook her head. "Just tell me this, kid: with the granola bar, and the hair dye, and that cigarette, are we all squared away, or what?"

Penance considered the girl with a tilted head. He very slowly shook his head, clucking his tongue.

"We're close," he said. "But no."

"Why the hell not?"

Penance held up a finger:

"One: my balls _still_ hurt—"

"I _said _I was sorry—"

Another finger:

"Two:" he said, "you made fun of my name—"

"Hey! I told you about _my_ weird-ass name, too—"

Another finger:

"Three:" he said, "you made fun of my fox head. Only _I _get to make fun of my fox head—"

"I was just sayin' that it's a little creepy—"

Another finger:

"Four:" he said, "you keep trying to treat me like some delicate little thing, Whip. I'm _not_. Really, I'm not."

"I never said you were, but—"

The boy crossed his arms and leaned forward, scowling up at the girl's face:

"In fact, you have _no idea _how tough I really am!"

All at once, and to the girl's everlasting horror, Penance took one giant step backward. It was a step into thin air. Penance's body disappeared from view instantly, hurtling down the six story drop like a tossed sack of flour.

X

X

X

OK. All things considered, that might've been a littlechildish.

Or, you know, a _lot_...

Penance had already dusted himself off and disappeared into an adjacent building by the time Whip made it down to where he landed. He thought about the baffled girl searching around for him, finding nothing but a caved-in dumpster and a few footprints in the dirty asphalt. That made him feel a little crummy, all in all, but it was for the best.

The sad fact was that he kinda liked Whip. If not 'liked' then 'tolerated'. He could've stayed up on that ruined rooftop chatting with her for hours. He _could've_, but he didn't want to. Philadelphia would be behind him in a matter of days, and Whip, too. And right now that meant he'd be leaving behind a one-time acquaintance who let him bum a cigarette. That he could do. _That_ was easy peasy. If he stayed around the girl any longer, however, things might be different: he'd be leaving behind something else, entirely.

Another friend.

Penance might've wanted someone to talk to— desperately, in fact— but the last thing he needed right now was another friend. Right now he was nowhere near the composure needed to be able to cope with losing another one of those, when the time inevitably came.

But, then again, maybe he _could_ just hang around Philly a bit longer—

The boy shook his head, and he grit his teeth together.

"Eh, shut your gab, Galabeg," Penance looked to his back pocket as he walked. "I _know_, alright? Of course I do..."

This cautious behavior was a matter of survival, and it took precedence above all else. It was the reason Penance's age was in the triple-digits, and that his head wasn't buried in some makeshift grave right now. He didn't have the freedom to deviate from this behavior, he knew, even if he wanted to, and even if someone like Whip _made_ him want to.

The feeling would pass, in time. He was just being emotional, really.

And yeah, that was a liability in and of itself. He did his best to rid himself of emotion in these situations— keep himself from being 'delicate', and try his best to be strong— but for some reason his feelings were quite strong, sometimes.

Go figure.

He crossed the street far down the block, to avoid any chance of Whip seeing him, and then he took to back alleys as he made his way over to St. Hubertus. If nothing else he could get a good night's sleep on the grounds, maybe plan his next move from there. He ducked into the window of another run-down building near the church grounds, looking for a shortcut, and instead he got lost in a small maze of construction tape and scaffolding. The building was undergoing heavy renovations, and as Penance stumbled about, nearly blind in a sea of plastic sheets and equipment, he felt a familiar scent trickle up his nostrils. It was a dank must, and it was a special type of must that had only one possible source: bound paper.

When he threw up one of the drop cloths hanging beside him he discovered he was correct: a stack of books met his eyes, as tall as he was. The library around him was spacious, but it looked like the renovations had stalled at some point. A thin layer of dust covered the scaffolds, and it looked like no work had been done here for some time. The library was in limbo, it seemed, and its books were sealed tight beneath their protective drop cloths, waiting for workers that might never come.

There was something unbelievably depressing about that idea, Penance thought.

The boy wandered aimlessly through the stacks, making his way to the other side of the building. On the way he passed a small cart in the middle of the library near the main desk, and he tripped over the cloth protecting the books underneath. Penance scanned the books absently as he replaced the cloth; it was a mix of very odd titles, and it almost seemed like they'd been placed there for want of a _proper_ place. Whoever put these books here just didn't know what else to do with them.

One title caught his eye: it was a book with a very cartoonish cover showing what looked like a little boy standing on top of the moon, or maybe an asteroid. Penance's eyes widened as he read the title.

It was called '_The Little Prince'_.

"_Am Flath Beag_," Penance whispered, chuckling as the Gaelic rolled off his tongue. His chortles echoed in the empty room, and he shook his head as he covered up the rest of the books.

He found a small cemetery behind the walls of St. Hubertus, and he spent an uneventful night there leaning up against a tombstone, and staring at another tombstone with Galabeg perched atop it. He wasn't particularly tired, still energized from that little nap in the movie theater, and so he spent the night playing with a stack of rocks, building little 'castles', and listening to every birdsong that met his ears. There weren't many, of course, being so wedged into the tight confines of the city as he was, but every so often a little peep or two met his ears.

But no whippoorwills, he noticed.

Not that he was _listening_ for any, of course.

He took the time to meditate, and he put his mind down in that little 'pit of darkness' until he saw the light: there were other immortals in the city, of course, and some were relatively close to him. Not close enough to be a threat, and in any event they'd have to be within arm's reach of Penance to actually know what he was, anyway. He was safe enough, for now.

Penance looked up at Galabeg:

"No, that's right, of course," the boy muttered. "Mister Corndog didn't need to be that close to me. But he was stalking me. He must've been following my trail for a long time before he jumped me. Someone else might pick up where he left off, but that's alright, 'cause I'm _erasing _that trail..."

Around 3 AM or so he decided to stretch his legs. He made a few lazy laps around the small cemetery, and on one of his rambling circles he noticed that the side door to the church was wedged open ever so slightly. He crouched low and approached it; there was blackness beyond, but a little further in a very wan light shone. Penance crept on his tip-toes, careful not to make a sound with his Reeboks, and he discovered a kitchen at the end of the little hall. It was relatively spacious, given the size of the church itself, and it must've been used both for parish functions as well as some kind of soup kitchen.

He made sure to look for any sign of life in the place, and he found none. All the kitchen's cupboards were stacked with canned food, and a refrigerator housed milk and meat, but none of that concerned the boy.

Penance was a great many things, really, but one thing he _wasn't_ was a thief.

Instead he turned his attention to a small bathroom on the other side of the room; there was a tiny sink inside, along with a mirror, and that's all he could ask for, really. Penance took his shirt off and got to work dousing his hair in water, after which he mixed up a solution of the blonde hair dye and went to work scrubbing it into his hair. It was agonizing work, and when he was finished he felt like his fingers were ready to fall off, but when he finally got his hair rubbed dry and looked over the results he could appreciate all the hard work.

Or not, actually.

"I look like freakin' Madonna," he ran a hand through his new, dirty-blond hair, picking apart the clumpy locks as he went, and grumbling to himself as he did so. After a while he considered revising his opinion as he modeled before the mirror; after all, it could be worse, right?

"_Could_ this actually be any worse?"

Given that Penance had just broken into a church to perform his little dye job, and given his obvious decision to tempt fate with his words, God decided to answer his question almost immediately.

All at once the bathroom door swung shut, hitting Penance in the arm and throwing him against the side of the little room. A loud screeching noise sounded on the other side of the door and then the door handle suddenly rose up a little bit, as if someone had just wedged a chair or something against it. A few furious pushes against the door confirmed this: Penance was locked inside the bathroom, and there was no real chance for escape.

He decided to sum up his current predicament with a philosophical musing:

"_Fuck_..."


End file.
